American Flyer 401

I don't know, but that is a good looking set.

It will be OK.  It will look a bit short as the 1708 cars are long. The 401 is sort of tall and skinny in appearance.

Most of the 401s sets I have seen use the shorter 1100 series freights or passenger cars (a la 1122 Blue Streak). It appears your caboose is a 3017, which would have brass journals and the gray flat tin trucks and trail 3046, 3018, 3019 freights. Although a little longer than those consists, the trucks and copper journals on the 1700 series cars should match nicely. I wonder if the tender is T&S, curly cue, or the same as the 1700s.

Jim O'C posted:

Most of the 401s sets I have seen use the shorter 1100 series freights or passenger cars (a la 1122 Blue Streak). It appears your caboose is a 3017, which would have brass journals and the gray flat tin trucks and trail 3046, 3018, 3019 freights. Although a little longer than those consists, the trucks and copper journals on the 1700 series cars should match nicely. I wonder if the tender is T&S, curly cue, or the same as the 1700s.

Jim, Rob,

Thank you for your answers. I do not know much about AF 0 gauge, may I ask what is:  T&S, curly cue, or the same as the 1700s?

Regards

Fred

Couplers.  Tab and slot.  Simulated knuckle, and latch styles.  No matter what, you are going to have to engineer something to get them to work together.

sncf231e posted:

Jim O'C posted:

Most of the 401s sets I have seen use the shorter 1100 series freights or passenger cars (a la 1122 Blue Streak). It appears your caboose is a 3017, which would have brass journals and the gray flat tin trucks and trail 3046, 3018, 3019 freights. Although a little longer than those consists, the trucks and copper journals on the 1700 series cars should match nicely. I wonder if the tender is T&S, curly cue, or the same as the 1700s.

Jim, Rob,

Thank you for your answers. I do not know much about AF 0 gauge, may I ask what is:  T&S, curly cue, or the same as the 1700s?

Regards

Fred

I was referring to the back of the tender. It could have tab and slot or curly cue couplers that will be difficult to couple with the 1700 freight's couplers. Changing the rear coupler on the tender would allow you to pull the ives/lionel 1700s or you could find an additional tender that already has the coupler you need such as a 1663t or a 1507.

Jim O'C  posted some great photos of the possible equipment you could use.  I hope you won't mind if I add a few more.

I believe that this is the engine that you have coming.  A Type XX engine #401 with a #421 Type IV tender

.

As Rob mentioned you will have some difficulty making all of the different coupler styles work together.  One option would be to  match up an Ives tender that has the the same kind of latch couplers as the cars have. 

The tender is actually a Lionel tender.  Remember this is from the transition period when Lionel and Flyer both owned Ives.  Some of Lionel's equipment was re-branded as Ives.

Here are the two American Flyer couplers that Jim showed above:

The tab and slot

and this is the curly cue, which American Flyer called its "automatic coupler" in 1938 and 1939.

The third coupler is the latch type which I believe is actually a Lionel coupler

Which type of coupler do your cars have?  I'm guessing that you have the latch type.  I don't think the 1700 series freight cars ever came with the Ives coupler.  But I could be wrong

In any case this is probably what your cars matched with the equipment that you are waiting for will look like all together - if you can figure out a way to couple them together.

This is the Lionel #257 which was re-branded as an Ives #257 that actually came with your cars.

This is what the whole set looked like (from your original post it doesn't sound as if you have the matching Ives caboose in your collection).

I hope this gives you some ideas.  Be sure to post photos when the package arrives.

Greg

Your loco should look very good with the pictured 8 wheel passenger cars which come in many colors.  I'd stick with the tab and slot unless you really want to "automatically" couple.  It's relatively easy to pop existing couplers off the passenger cars once you remove the roofs.  You can even install Lionel box couplers if you like.  When I swapped some stuff and ended up with the American Flyer cars I also got the PRR type tender but no locomotive.  The previous owner had obviously swapped the tender T coupler with a Lionel latch. In addition one of the coaches had a latch at one end and tab and slot at the other.  I restored the coach to two tab and slots and run them behind an AF 1218 electric.  If I ever find the correct loco I'll change the latch coupler on the tender to tab and slot.

Lew

Thank you all for this information, I learned a lot; this shows again that this is a nice forum.

It looks like the mix of AF and Ives is good.

My Ives cars have the latch couplings, so I have to see what the American Flyer 401 tender and caboose have; I do have the Ives 1712 caboose also, so I can choose caboose. However, coupling is normally not a problem; I made up a trains some time ago with some 10 different cranes from different manufacturers and that worked:

Regards

Fred

My American Flyer 401 arrived on Friday and it is in running condition, so I had a run with the Ives freight cars using a "wire coupler".

Regards

Fred

that looks great!

Fred,

They look great together, and they look even better running.  Thanks for posting the video.

Greg

Northwoods Flyer

That looks pretty good. I used old rails to make my adapters, 

In my opinion, your American Flyer 401 engine looks better off as a 2-8-4 Berkshire that I'm dreaming of customizing in my head, if I had the skills.

@Tinplate Art posted:

Fred: NICE acquisition  and WELCOME BACK! :-)

I was talking to the user who has this train.

Andrew Steiner: OOPS! I did NOT look at the date of Fred's original post! I dearly miss his presence and great contributions to this forum! :-(

ALL: SORRY for the confusion! :-)

https://ogrforum.com/...7#152899748455864697 That's okay. We all have our moments.