Company Profile: AHMHistory in a Nutshell
Aside from making the hobby more affordable to newcomers, perhaps one of Paul's more positive contributions was, together with Polk's, importing a great many products from Rivarossi of Italy, which popularized the brand and brought new North American items to the market. Paul also imported Minitrains from Egger-Bahn in Germany; the trains were HO narrow gauge (they ran on N Gauge track), which helped establish HOn2˝ modeling in the US. Although Paul was said to have made a fortune in the business, by the late 1970s AHM had fallen on hard times. In 1982, AHM and its parent company, General Hobbies Corporation, also owned by Paul, declared bankruptcy after having just placed a very large order with Rivarossi (the order was almost as large as Rivarossi's net worth at the time). Since AHM never took delivery, Rivarossi struggled for years and was eventually forced into bankruptcy.
N Scale ProductsThe earliest evidence of AHM being involved in N Scale is 1968, by way of an ad that showed just a few Roco freight cars—they were pushing their HOn2˝ line much more aggressively. At best their promotional efforts in N Scale were meager and capricious; they branded their train sets and rolling stock "Minitrains," which is odd because it was already being used for the Egger-Bahn HOn2˝ line (now made by Standard Light GmbH). Most of AHM's first N Scale trains were made by Lima of Italy. "True to blueprint" was almost embarrassing, because Lima's products were entry-level at best. And packaging was as eclectic as the product line. Like a number of their N Scale competitors, AHM imported Roco freight cars, which were either branded for AHM or not branded at all. They also offered a mix of structures from Faller, Pola, Bachmann and others. AHM's logo changed frequently, and towards the end they were reduced to selling what amounted to toy trains. When AHM became IHC, they dropped the entire existing N Scale line and released a much smaller assortment of different items, which included some Mehano rolling stock, a series of building kits called "Homes of Yesterday and Today," presumably made by Heljan, and a bunch of Bachmann's cheap Chinese-made detail items renamed "Mini-Things." Printed MatterReturn > Atlas Tool CompanyCopyright © 2017-2020 by David K. Smith. All Rights Reserved.
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