Ambroid Wood Craftsman Kits

The Kits

As I mentioned earlier, the most likely reason Ambroid started to make model railroad car kits was to promote its excellent glue to a wider audience. The company eventually made kits in all the popular scales at the time: H0, S, and 0 scale, or "gauge" as it erroneously was called back then. (For an explanation of the difference between scale and gauge, see the NMRA - National Model Railroad Association - page where this is explained).

It is not clear to me when the first Ambroid model railroad car kit was made. I have looked in the 1945 volume of the Model Railroader magazine and there are no Ambroid ads in any of those issues, so my guess is that the first kits (the K-1, K-2, and K-3 kits) were released sometime between 1945 and 1950 when K-1 and K-2 appear in an April ad as if they were already existing kits. I am even more uncertain of when the last kit was produced by Ambroid. I have seen ads for new kits in 1976 but the last two kits (25 and 26 in both the H and the O series) do not appear in any ad during 1977, 1978 or 1979. I am guessing that these two kits were released in 1977, maybe 1978.

Ambroid issued several series of kits (see the detailed listing of all series on the following pages), starting with a number of un-numbered kits in H0 scale only. These kits were eventually given K-numbers, with the first K kit (K-10) appearing in 1955. In 1953 Ambroid issued (what appears to be) a very small series of S scale kits almost like a side note in the history. I have only been able to locate three of these kits. The K kits were followed by two series of limited edition kits, the so called "One-of-Five-Thousand" kits made between 1957 and 1968. The last two kits of the second series of the One-of-Five-Thousand may have been issued in the "Heritage", or the H series, kits, starting in 1969. During the H series production Ambroid also issued some of the same H kits in 0 scale, called the O series kits. Not all H kits were duplicated in the O series, but I have been able to locate 19 of the 26 H kits in 0 scale.

Even though the kits were sold by Ambroid under its name, all of them were manufactured by another company. The first, and main, manufacturer was Northeastern Scale Models, which made the kits during most of their production time. At some time, Northeastern severed the relationship with Ambroid and started to sell the kits under its own name. Some kits were also initially produced by Display Craft and by Quality Craft. One single kit (K-14) was produced by Madewell. Northeastern sold the division that made the kits and some kits were re-produced and re-distributed by Gloor Craft and Quality Craft, although these companies also produced their own series of wood-metal craftsman kits. I have indicated the manufacturer of the kits in the tables on the following pages. N=Northeastern, M=Madewell, D=Display Craft, G=Gloor Craft, and Q=Quality Craft. A letter within parenthesis indicates information I have not been able to verify with a second source.

All listed prices are collected from auctions on eBay. Prices for built kits are indicated in Bold, Italic numbers. Where available, I have also listed average and median prices, measured since late 2003.

Acknowledgments

Ambroid is a registered trademark of Graphic Vision, Inc. and is used here with permission.
Ambroid adhesives can be found at Ambroid.com

Model Railroader is a registered trademark of Kalmbach Publishing Co.