Any Tinplate Survival Stories?

Nice engine. Good feeling when you get something like that running. I have fixed up several but never took pictures and can't remember the details.  When they run they join the fleet.

Nice looking engine.  That's a new one to me.  I'm thinking you've got a pic of it nice and shiny?  Twould be nice to see.

Ha & Sorry! No shiny pics so far. My friend and I differ on how clean locomotives should be. If it is a steam switcher, my thought has always been it should not be too shiny like its prototype, which spent its days working under dirty grimy conditions. I do draw the line with plucking off cat hair and dog hair, though.

 

Tom 

Given it's age, it probably has endured a spit shine or two.  I'd try to make that beauty shine like diamond in a goats arse.  Have fun.

Maybe that should be like a "diamond in a yard goat's arse!" 

Agreed that they were not usually clean and nice except after going through the shop.

Well, some men take exceptional pride in their work, and their equipment.  But if the boss isn't going to pay someone to keep the machines clean, well, they have no choice but to be dirty.  Just be safe lads.
Just got my standard gauge track out.  Will be running trains tonight. Thanks for the inspiration.  Cheers!

I have aspirations of becoming a "zen train whisperer" someday, someone who finds trains in people's trash bins and rescues them, repairs them, and restores them.

 

...but in the meantime I only have one real "survival story" for the thread... 

 

The 608 and two 607s in these pictures were my dads when he was a kid.  The engine is an MTH/LionelCorpTinplate 262E which I use to get them rolling.

 

The cars were not complete "train wrecks" when we found them a year or so ago in a basement, but they did need quite a bit of TLC to get rolling again (wiring, couplers, minor bending and mending, etc.).

 

They aren't worth much on the bay, but they are the most valuable-to-me trains I own, I really need to take some better pictures of them one of these days.

 

Best...Rich

 

 

Nice train. I know what you mean-some things are priceless.

I have several steamers I've rebuilt from bare shells, and a green set of Prewar passenger cars that were missing trucks,roofs, and were purchased at the lofty sum of $1 each. and two out of three of my Postwar 2400s were rebuilds.

Very nice ! the essence of the hobby.

Great stories and pictures Rich and Dave!

Rich, in your dreams, do you find them with one of those old school divining rods that people find water with? 

 

Tom

Hi Tom,

 

I was thinking more along the lines of this!

 

 

Best...Rich

I actually witched the well for our lake cabin 60 years ago like this. It worked!

RoyBoy:  Did it help you find the lake?

The lake was in plain view, but drinkable water was something that typically required drilling. We used a sand point and drove the galvanized pipe into the ground with a weighted ram made from a larger diameter pipe.

 

The well I "witched" delivered pure clear water and was only 25 feet down. The neighbors, whose cabin was only 50 feet away from ours had to drill down 125 feet. My mom and dad tried "witching" but they could not do it. Apparently they did not have enough devil in them, so they said. Children are free from a lot of the biases that adults have, so it worked for me.

25 ft. well only 50 ft. from another cabin. Not too safe.

From here;

 

 

To Here;

 

 

I acquired this gem from Overland Flyer a few years ago (this is his "Before" picture):

 

 

In addition to the colorful blaze orange paint scheme, the nose had an amazing dent at the bottom... it almost looked like it had been shot with a musket.  The windup motor was pretty much intact except that the die cast governor weight had succumbed to zinc pest long ago, and the rest of the motor was somewhat rusty.

 

The motor was cleaned, lubed and a new weight machined for the governor.  The nose was removed and the dent c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y hammered out, no body filler was used.  The shell was stripped to bare metal and dipped painted like Marx did at the factory.  A repro nameplate and key rounded out the rebuild.  The result:

 

 

Was it worth the effort to restore a windup Marx Commodore Vanderbilt?  To me, absolutely.  Early CV's can be found without too much effort, but finding one with the earliest reversing Marx clockwork motor is another matter.  This locomotive runs around my clockwork layout on a regular basis with a train of 6" tin from the same period in tow.  My thanks for Overland Flyer for finding it and passing it along to me!

those do look great Steve and James...but for some reason I like the before ones better.....maybe it's the potential under the dirt and rust.

Great work-great trains !!  Love to see the oldies come back to life. I do some restoring but not that extensive. A real pleasure.

It's the best part of this hobby and the reason I love tinplate. Here are a couple.

 

Mickey and Minnie had seen better days:

 

 

The Blue Comet Bridge:

 

those look great James. It's very satisfying to take something made from the last centuary,busted,rusted, missing parts, and make it work again.

Everything in my collection looked terrible when I got it

 

 

that's not terrible Brian..that's patina!

how come, when someone brings an antique onto Antiques Roadshow, they get told "if you hadn't restored it, it would be worth zillions, but since you did $1.95. Sure doesn't apply to old trains or cars.

This was probably my worst one....or best one depending on how you look at it.

 

 

Joe, 

  I think I remember that locomotive from last year.

  Very nice. Did you do all the work by yourself?

 

Tom 

Yes I did Tom. Thank you.

Jee, Joe. That's some good work. I'll have to post my Marx 495 when its done. I just scratch built a new brushplate for it, old one was missing and I wanted the sealed brush wells Lionel used in the 1940's. My brush wells came from a broken whistle braushplate, by the way. No vintage engines harmed.

Here's a Marx Commodore that I built from a shell and other parts I had acquired. It's not totally stock as I added a smoker from a 666! The tender has a plastic shell mounted on a 4 wheel 6" frame.

Hi Joe –

 

Do you know the story about how the locomotive and cars behind it got to be so damaged?  Looks like a fire. 

 

Great restoration, though.

The tinplate stuff was purchased by a friend of mine. The previous owner did have a fire at his place but I don't know how bad it was or what else he lost.

 

quote:

that's not terrible Brian..that's patina!

how come, when someone brings an antique onto Antiques Roadshow, they get told "if you hadn't restored it, it would be worth zillions, but since you did $1.95. Sure doesn't apply to old trains or cars.

 

There have been two schools of thought on restoring trains for a long time. Plenty of people prefer to have items with their original "Patina", as opposed to a restoration. (I am one of them). But to each their own.

 

That written, a few of the trains pictured above are in such a poor state, that even I would either part them out, or restore them.

 

I've read that a preference for originality has crept into the world of car collecting too.

I'll never understand how anybody can place a higher value on a restored item because it's painted in a rare color. As if the rare colored paint cost more than a common paint color. (Last I knew, the price was the same for all colors)

Cosmetic repairs out of the way, still rusted a tad and scratched, but that gives my 495 character. Oh yes, and the missing side rod. But she runs 

 

More work was put into it, it looks better, chances are it runs better (just a few reasons). I wouldn't pay more for a used modern spectrum model in "original condition" just because it's missing pieces and there are cracks and dents in the shell, I would probably pay more for a used one in good condition or was refurbished/fixed.

 

Some people enjoy the look of rust and scratches, I like to think of tinplate trains as "toys" and treat them as such. I like them to shine and run like the day they first lit up a child's face.

 

Collecting as an investment has always baffled me, people will buy the ugliest or junkiest things for crazy amounts of money for the sake of it being "rare". I can always repaint a 400e to look like the Blue Comet set, I could care less if it was the "real thing" or not, because in the end it's still just a 400e painted blue.

 

Where was I going with this again?