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50' Stock Car
Chicago & North Western
No. 5421-E
50' Stock Car
Great Northern
No. 5421-D
50' Stock Car
Milwaukee
No. 5421-F
50' Stock Car
Northern Pacific
No. 5421-C
50' Stock Car
Union Pacific
No. 5421-B
Note that all paint jobs include the white band across
the top of each end of the car stating it is of "excess height." If you pull this car up to any standard height freight
car, you'll see that this model is NOT really excess height as it claims. It still provides for a unique and attractive,
if fanciful, example of a rarely seen and rarely modeled prototype...the modern stock car.
An early appearance for this offering is the Test
Track column in the February 1972 Railroad Model Craftsman magazine. The car appears to gone by the time the '79
AHM catalog is printed. For 1972-77, AHM listed $2.49 as this car's retail price. In recent years, this same model has
been produced and sold by IHC and possibly Model Power. Examples have also been found in Mehano, the European maker
of the car, packages.
Model Power's run of the cars is early 1980s, an ad for the car appears in the
October 1982 edition of Model Railroader magazie. Model Power's roadnames offerings included: C&NW (9101);
UP (9102); Milwaukee (9103); Great Northern (9104); Canadian National (9105); Canadian Pacific (9106). If Model Power
did have the CN and CP examples produced as the ad suggests, they would be the only exclusive examples to this offering.
Produced in Yugoslavia for AHM, this interesting
modern stock carrier appears to have no prototype for which can be located from my research. It vaguely resembles a Northern
Pacific as well as Union Pacific examples, but the AHM model, if based on either of these, takes many liberties in its design.
This model is only 50ft., the Northern Pacific Big Pig Palace was an 86' car. Union Pacific operates a modern car similar
that carries HOGX ownership marks, but those cars were built from old Missouri Pacific 50' Auto Parts Box Cars and though
closer in appearance to the AHM model, they are not the same. The green HOGX example displayed is an Overland Models brass
HO-scale model and is perhaps the nearest relative to the AHM car.
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