Cheap RPO Cars!

[Cody J]

This afternoon my mom and I were looking all over for a wooden cane for a school project (I have to dress up like FDR) and we couldn't find one. We went to Wal-Mart, K-Mart, CVS then we finally decided to go to Ollie's which is pretty much a junk store but sometimes they have some weird stuff (like wooden canes) so I went in and couldn't find any and so to get back to the exit I walked through a toy aisle and I saw two large stacks of IHC HO scale RPO cars! They were Richmond, Fredericksburgh & Potomac and they were Seaboard Coast Line and they were only $5.99 each! Now, I know IHC is out of business and they're products weren't that great in quality but I'm only 14 and when I see a good buy even if it may not be the greatest quality, I'll buy it or in this case, I'll but 4 (2 RF&P and 2 SCL). I don't have much use for them right now as I'm running modern CSX but in the future I could or I could run some sort of CSX business train.

But this goes to show that even in the strangest places and in the strangest situations you can find trains.

Cody

[Doneldon]

Cody-

Not so strange.  I can find trains in just about every room in my house.

          --D

[Cody J]

Lol, well I live in the middle of nowhere and have to travel 30 min to get to my LHS so it was a surprise to me

[J3a-614]

Ollie's is a store that runs on the mistakes of other stores.  If another store or chain of stores goes out of business, or if the other store or chain has too much of something, Ollie's (or Big Lots/Odd Lots) will buy this inventory very cheaply, possibly even as a lot at auction, and in turn resell it, making a living on some very small profit margins.  It's a challenge, but they do it.

Upside can be some things that show up at very low prices as you've noticed.  At the same time, I'd pick up some of these now if you can and if they are  something you could use (they would be rebuild and repaint material for me)--even if IHC hadn't gone out of business, the nature of places like Ollie's and Odd Lots is that you won't see something like this again.

Good luck, have fun being FDR, and you may want to check out  "The President Travels By Train" by Bob Withers from your library.

[BaltoOhioRRfan]

Good luck, have fun being FDR, and you may want to check out  "The President Travels By Train" by Bob Withers from your library.

I have that book! great book too.

[Cody J]

J3a:
Ollie's does have a lot of strange things for cheap prices but we tend to stay away from there because the store is so messy and disorganized.

[J3a-614]

Thanks for the response, Trains Rock, and I'm glad B&O Fan likes Withers' book too; like me, he's from West Virginia, used to be a reporter from the Huntington Herald-Dispatch.

[Cody J]

Hmm, Since both of you like it and both of you are from my neck of the woods then I'll see if our library has it or if I can get it from another library.

[Cody J]

I just ordered the book and I saw that it has 422 pages! That is quite a bit as the largest book I have ever read was 360. I guess it's time to break a new record 

[J3a-614]

Let us know if you like the book!

Later, when you get the chance (and if you haven't already done so), check out "The Nickel Plate Story" by John Rehor, "Wheeling & Lake Erie," by John B. Corns, "B&O Power" by Larry Sagle and Al Staufer, and "Pennsy Power," "Pennsy Power II," and "Pennsy Power III" by Staufer and others, among them Bert Pennypacker; all of these feature vintage photos in the Wheeling-Eastern Ohio area you are in.

You may also be interested in "I Travel By Train," by Rollo Walter Brown, provided you can find it; it's a little old, published in 1937 or 1938.  It's non-fiction, by a person who travels by train on busness, and it has his comments about what he sees in America at that time.  It is somewhat disturbing to read his comments about some big businessmen he meets on various trains, some from Wall Street, and realize that some things haven't changed much.

Good luck, and have fun with this "summer reading list!"

[BaltoOhioRRfan]

I just ordered the book and I saw that it has 422 pages! That is quite a bit as the largest book I have ever read was 360. I guess it's time to break a new record 

I've read a book about hte B&O thats 431.....TWICE! Impossible Challenge(orginal) and Impossible Challenge II(re-write). Both are great books with a lot of old 1800's era photos.