In addition to a huge selection of out of production brass, I’m also offering my multi-decade accumulation of HO wood rolling stock kits for sale or trade.

Many of us old-timers were fortunate to enter the hobby when RTR was hardly known about other than entry level train sets. Scale model railroading for decades had five basic genres:

1. arm chair - looking, admiring
2. possession - collecting and accumulating
3. building equipment (rolling stock/structures)
4. building layouts
5. finally, operation.

We all had our favorites, and mine was the 3rd - building rolling stock from wood kits. Then followed structure building, followed by layout building, finally followed by operation at the bottom of the heap, but still enjoyable. Today four of the five genres are alive and well, but rarely will anyone find the 3rd item: wood kits of rolling stock and structures. A few are on eBay or sporadically at shows; more rarely at dealers.

I’ll admit that I cannot build a wood car kit and have it look as good as current plastic offerings, but it was the enjoyment of building and then pride of accomplishment that drove me. Now even structures are available ready to plant and they seem to dominate many current pikes under construction. This is a double edge sword as to a dinosaur like me; I’m completely aghast at this "plug and play", but then RTR is allowing newer folks into the hobby who possibly may have been intimidated at having to build everything - or even anything.  My layout now consists of almost 600 hand-built wood freight and passenger cars. Only hoppers and tank cars are still either from plastic kits or RTR, but if I can somehow acquire more years, I plan on also building a fleet of wooden tank and hopper cars.

I mentioned “accumulation," item #2 above.  I have accumulated well over 1500 wood HO car kits…both passenger and freight. I’ll be posting high resolution photos of these soon to come so you’ll be able to find what you are looking for….and still hopefully some folks are! There is just too much to prepare a list as I am a one man operation.

You will find kits from Ambroid, Quality Craft, Labelle, Main Line, Westwood, Olympic Cascadian, HD, Bev Bel and Con Cor (yup, both produced wood kits) and much much more. All are new in the box….mostly never opened. Note: all are from the steam era. I also have a selection of recent Westerfield, F&C, and Sunshine which I most likely will never build. Funny thing about building a flat resin kit; I have actually spent a mess of hours -more hours, really- in building these than in constructing a wood kit, but when complete they still look like a production plastic car from the Orient. There is a certain quality and individual personality to a hand-built wood car and structure.

I’ll pass on a comment made during an open house, as a 50 car train of hand-built wood cars passed by, “Gee, I did not know that Athearn made all of these”. I wasn’t upset at all;  I just reminded myself that I’m now in the 21st Century!

My plans were (and still may be) to build most of these as I become older and more decrepit (I’m only “crepit” now) and can’t get downstairs to play with the train set.

But 1500 kits???? Nah! I really think somehow they reproduced behind my back, as I cannot see how I wound up with so many.

Here is an opportunity to turn back the clock and revive or discover skills you may have forgotten about in lieu of instant gratification.

Zanes Trains (my books!)