@CAPPilot- First of all...I hope you are paying close attention to the advice of your doc's and are concentration on getting better. Next, THANK YOU for your story on your brother and Marx...You know Marx was an interesting company in many ways. They never stopped making TOY trains, although they did also produce many more realistic trains, especially in plastic. Yet some of the last trains Marx produced before folding up their train business were the 4 wheel 6" tinplate cars they had been making since about 1935. Marx also produced some "scale" tinplate, starting in about 1940 they designed an entire line of "S" scale but "0" gauge trains designed to be pulled by their die cast 999 and 333 engines. These were true S scale and at the time, some flyer fans used AF trucks to convert them to S gauge. The interesting thing is that they were all tinplate. Lithographed beautifully and still pretty collectable today. They peaked in availability in about 148 and were gone by the middle 50's. As you said, around 1952 Marx initiated the plastic freights.
I found (and still do) that the plastic cars were colorful, reasonably realistic, rugged for play value and (especially in the 1970's when my train collecting budget was very limited) inexpensive. So I would have agreed with your brother about "train show" cars to run.
That Lionel "aerotrain" I think they called it, is unique and there was at least one prototype of such a train although not very successful. You definatley need to get out those 35mm slides and let us "Crazy Marx" guys on the forum see some of them.
Thanks for sharing some of your brother's train legacy with us.
Best Wishes
Don
