Antique stuff...

Not sure where I originally posted this, but I have now received the remaining trains from the son of the man who invented the roller bearing.   The son was the father-in-law of a good friend  that I have in Greenville, SC, who is 85 years old, and he has been letting me have the collection as it makes its way from Edisto, SC.  It is all old vintage stuff, and all the cars are not Lionel, but the craft kits from the 30's and 40's.  They all have scale non-working couplers.  But, the real issue with all this stuff is the locomotives.  All are steam of various wheel arrangement, but this fellow was a modifier/builder to the max degree.  Every single tender has a motor and drive wheel set in them, from some diesels of that era, usually vertical motors turning a worm gear to the axle gear.  He built a 2-14-2 out of a ?-8-? and ?-6-?, both wheel sets have their original Lionel motor, and there is a dual set of driven wheels in the tender.  He used a Lionel 250W Type Z transformer to run his empire, and from tests of those old craft cars on the track, it looks like he needed everyone of those motors to pull a long train.  The passenger cars are all metal from AMT, metal wheels and trucks, and compared to modern stuff, are real heavyweights even though they are models of streamlined equipment.  I hope to eventually get everything up and running, just for the fun of all that old stuff on the rails again.