Interesting advertisements

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Greg_Lewis
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Interesting advertisements

Post by Greg_Lewis »

Found these in a 1948 issue of Billboard magazine. The publication then covered all areas of entertainment from broadcasting to live theater, circuses and carnivals, arcades, juke boxes, and more.

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Greg Lewis, Prop.
Eyeball Engineering — Home of the dull toolbit.
Our motto: "That looks about right."
Celebrating 35 years of turning perfectly good metal into bits of useless scrap.
Glenn Brooks
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Re: Interesting advertisements

Post by Glenn Brooks »

Very cool. It’s rare that Ottaway background info comes to light these days... Lester Ottaway started making his steam trains in 1942, but the business really became established when his son Herb was discharged from the Army in 1948, and joined the shop as GM. Lester’s first, actual, shop made locomotive is now on display at Maricopa Live Steamers Museum, just outside Phoenix. (Lester’s first locomotive was an old barn find, International, rust bucket, they restored to operating condition.)
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My Ottaway C-50- 1065 was built in March, 1950. It has spent most of its life in private hands, operating on Backyard Railroads, first in upstate New York, and since 1969 with three owners in Washington state.
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Lester produced between 10 and 20 Ottaways and Herb Ottaway produced another 80 of these locomotives before selling the tooling and manufacturing rights to Harold Chance, in 1960. Harold created Chance Amusements - today a major international manufacturer of theme park rides, the C.P. Huntington, and Carousels.

There’s still around 50 or 60 of these locomotives and train sets in service today, mostly in private hands.

Thanks for finding this ad and posting!

Glenn
Moderator - Grand Scale Forum

Motive power : 1902 A.S.Campbell 4-4-0 American - 12 5/8" gauge, 1955 Ottaway 4-4-0 American 12" gauge

Ahaha, Retirement: the good life - drifting endlessly on a Sea of projects....
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Dick_Morris
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Re: Interesting advertisements

Post by Dick_Morris »

This is the ad that drew my attention in the 1960s in Popular Science and Popular Mechanics. It was only about 2" square and buried in the back of the magazine.
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NP317
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Re: Interesting advertisements

Post by NP317 »

Same story with me!
RussN
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Greg_Lewis
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Re: Interesting advertisements

Post by Greg_Lewis »

Yup. I was in junior high and naively thought a buddy and I could pool our money and buy the C.P. Huntinton "bolt-together-kit" in sections. Fortunately the idea died before we spent any money. I kept that catalog for decades but it finally went out during a cleaning of the files. Wish I still had it just for the nostalgia.
Greg Lewis, Prop.
Eyeball Engineering — Home of the dull toolbit.
Our motto: "That looks about right."
Celebrating 35 years of turning perfectly good metal into bits of useless scrap.
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