Grandt Line was a major supplier of injection moulded parts for US Outline Railroad modelers in various scales for nearly sixty years, but was closed by the existing family members in the Fall of 2018. Fortunately for modelers, the tooling, production machinery and rights to make parts were sold to The San Juan Company.
This post will focus on Grandt Lines activities and parts to support O scale Maine Two Foot modeling.
The company was started some 60 years ago by Cliff Grandt, an exceptional modeler as well as a toolmaker, who had a hankering for narrow gauge prototypes. From a recent search through the early issues of Finelines and Slim Gauge News, it seems that one of Cliff’s first Maine Two Foot items was the SR&RL Railcar pedestal axlebox introduced in 1968.
In 1972 following the exit of a previous supplier a couple of years earlier, Grandt Line plugged a major gap in vital materials when they introduced their Two Foot wheel sets to ¼AAR standards, shown below.
Note the Boston lettering on the face of the wheel.
Whilst the majority of the items produced by Grandt Line for retail sales were injection moulded plastic, the company also produced some items in brass mainly for trade customers, such as the door and window sets some of which are illustrated below, which were commissioned by Custom Brass for use in the manufacture of their imported brass passenger car models in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s and have subsequently been offered to the retail market in both brass and plastic.
In 1982 Grandt Line produced a generic Maine Two Foot freight car truck, moulded in Delrin, and which is still available – one of the staples for many Maine On2 modellers over the years.
Other parts produced specifically for the Maine Two Foot rolling stock modeler were the 4 rung ladders for the B&SR boxcars, stake pockets suitable for two foot flat cars and the large nut and square washers used on the ends of truss rods by the SR&RL and WW&FR with scale reproductions of the company lettering.
In addition, the company acquired the tooling of the Hetch Hetchy Scale Models concern and re-introduced a number of Maine Two Foot specific doors, windows and other architectural details.
The company employed a number of family members and they decided that on their retirement in 2018 that they would prefer to close the business as Grandt Line and offer the tooling and production rights for sale to another supplier.
In the Fall/Autumn of 2018 the Grandt family announced that the production rights and tooling had been acquired by The San Juan Company in Colorado. Confirming their acquisition, the San Juan Company made a general announcement of intending to continue to supply parts in the future.
Some two years on it would appear that the San Juan Company have made great strides in re-introducing the parts. A brief scan through their O scale model railroading parts listing suggests that all parts for the Maine On2 modeler apart from the On2 wheelsets are currently available. To visit the San Juan Company website use our side bar link.
We have retained our side bar link to the Grandt Line web site for the time being as it still contains much useful information for the modeller.
Updated 27 September 2019, 17 Jan 2019 & 15 May 2020.
The Maine On2 FAQ 
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