Here's another project from my college days: a black Lionel 264e Commodore Vanderbilt locomotive that I completely restored.
I started off with this rough hulk that I picked up on FleaBay one summer day. As you can see, the locomotive was originally a black 264E rather than the more common Red Comet. A bunch of trim and linkage was missing, the paint was peeling everywhere and the body was badly dented and warped. The tender is correct for this locomotive but is not original to it-- I think I picked it out of a junk box at a train show. I managed to get the E-Unit working again and had it running as a hulk before I committed a weekend to restoring it.
The first order of business was stripping the locomotive shell of remaining trim and straightening out the body. I had to remove the steamchests to do it right, which required drilling out a couple of rivets (I replaced them with 4-40 screws that you may notice if you look closely at the pictures). Here's what it looked like after I straightened the sheet metal body out.
I did this locomotive before I had my bench grinder so all of the paint removal was done by hand. The original paint was so badly peeling that most of it came off easily with an Exacto knife.
The dilapidated tender came apart too. The only major issue was a broken piece of sheetmetal in the front of the body which I patched over. I needed a new drawbar so I fabricated one from a piece of an Erector Set. Most of the original trim parts were present and cleaned up nicely with a little rubbing alcohol and Brasso.
I shined up all the trim and repainted the locomotive and tender with my usual go-to, Rustoleum 2X. The paint has held up pretty well over the last ten years.
I have a set of 1670 series streamlined passenger coaches that I typically run with the 264e. These were nicely restored by a previous owner but were missing the original locking mechanisms to hold the cars together. I found that a 3-stud-length Lego Technic axle worked quite nicely as a stopgap. You can sneak the axle into the vestibule of the next car at an angle and then lock it in place by straightening it up. The bushing keeps the axle from falling out of the car.
The set sure does run nicely!
Although I don't usually go for duplicate engines in my collection, I make an exception for tinplate since I like to display a modern command-control reproduction set alongside my restorations. The companion for my black 264e is, quite naturally, the 265e in my MTH Lionel Corp Blue Streak set. This engine was technically a "project" as well since when I bought it brand new from the local hobby shop it had a defective light bulb that popped the circuit breaker on the transformer. Thankfully, it has been a merry runner ever since.
Here's a video of both Commodore Vanderbilts running on the layout. Old restoration and new reproduction!
