10-21-2019, 03:04 PM
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Contest, Sport, it's all good......
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Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: West of Minneapolis, MN
Posts: 760
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Earl
Wasn’t 1973 the year Estes changed to the diamond packs?
If so, I’m wondering if the older labeled motors were part of a sizable batch that were in the Estes warehouse(s) at the time but still in the older blue tubes. Possibly the motors were shucked of the older blue tube packaging and repackaged with newer motors in the diamond packs.
Earl
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I would suspect they did not put massive batches of motors all into blue tubes for longterm storage. More likely they left most of the motors "loose" in big containers, then packaged a certain % of them into mailing tubes as the "ready to go" stock of motors of a certain type got low, storing the rest until more were needed.
And, the 1/2A6-0 was not exactly a top-selling motor. So I could easily see Estes going a couple of years between production runs of those, doing a new run as the container of the last run dwindled, then old dumped in with new. Now if we were talking A8-3's or B6-4's two years apart, THAT would be a bigger puzzle, as I expect those to be among Estes' top-selling motors then, and perhaps now too (Probably B6-4's the top seller). So those probably were run every few months, if not every few weeks.
Hmmm. After typing this, it occurred to me that it would be safer to store those if they had all been put into the mailing tubes, rather than being left jumbled into big container boxes of whatever type. Though in any case, they do have motors stored in old railroad box cars or shipping containers, away from people (Motors have to "age" for a few weeks to dry out before being packaged, regardless). |