The Bachmann Train Set Caboose

Fellow layout-blogger John R recently put up a post that showed, among other things, a Bachmann train set caboose from the 1980s repainted for the Long Island MTA. This reminded me of how useful these early-day Bachmann items actually are. I went looking for what history I could find of the Bachmann cars on the web. The best I could come up with was some catalog pages on the hoseeker site, where the earliest reference seems to be in the 1980 catalog.

Like any of the inexpensive, train-set market cars from this era, these need to have the trucks and couplers replaced, and often they need repainting. But as visitors here know, even the "junkiest" AHM, Tyco, or Bachmann cars often have real possibilities, and they can be found at swap meets very inexpensively, especially if they're missing trucks or whatever, which serious modelers will toss and replace anyhow. As it happens, I have one in "mint" condition from some years-ago swap meet, where I couldn't have paid more than a buck so for it.

This is actually one of the big surprises of early Bachmann -- this is a halfway decent model of a Burlington NE-12 waycar. These were built by the CB&Q Havelock Shops shops as CB&Q 13525-13559 in 1954 and CB&Q 13560-13589 in 1960. Here's a photo of CB&Q 13544 from rrpicturearchives:

They were renumbered as BN 10331-10360 and 10391-10445. Over the years, I've upgraded and repainted a number of these.

John R's caboose struck me as a really good stand-in for the MTA ex-Illinois Central cars on the Long Island. I was able to wangle a set of the decals he'd gotten from a friend from John. As it happens, I have a Bachmann body that I'd already painted yellow, and I can simply paint the roof and underbody blue to match the MTA scheme, so this will be a fun project when i get the decals:

These cars no longer appear in the regular Bachmann line, although the Chattanooga train set apparently contains one. I've always wondered why Bachmann didn't upgrade them with better trucks and couplers, and maybe a separate roof walk, with better paint. But they'd probably want $50 for them, so it's probably better to track them down at swap meets and do a little work.