Hello everybody! I am 66 years old and I am just learning to play with trains. The first thing that happened was while clearing out my late fathers house, I happened across a box that contained a Hafner 200 clockwork engine with four cars but no track.
I took it home and started searching the Interweb for information about Hafner. Well, needless to say I found out a lot about clockwork trains - Hafner and Ives and Marx, oh my! And that led me to electric trains and O gauge and OGR. I read about all of the older trains from Lionel and American Flyer and Marx. I learned about O gauge and the different manufacturers and standards and watched videos about the different trains and train sets.
A few weeks later my wife and I were in Grand Rapids doing one of our favorite things, haunting thrift stores and junk shops. While wandering the aisles of a particular junk emporium, I spied this box...
A Marx Stream Line Steam Type electric train set #25012
It came with a 999 engine and tender along with 4 cars all with 3/16 "B" style trucks
This 999 has the two piece electrical pickup, spoked drivers and an embossed pilot
The 999 was actually in fairly good shape but was missing a drive rod on the left side and the left rear drive wheel looked like it had a crack in it. While trying to remove the driver, it broke (pot metal, imagine that!). I was able to find a junker on that on-line auction place along with a few cars.
The junker 999 was a newer one with the solid pilot and had a motor that would run but it was missing it's one piece electrical pickup. It had the Baldwin style drivers on it so...I pulled them off and replaced the spoked drivers on my 999 with the Baldwin style drivers
It was a pain in the you know what but, it worked!
While it was down with the wheel repair, I took the motor apart and cleaned out the cat/dog hair, dirt, old grease and spider webs, lubed and greased it all and put it back together. The motor runs great now, the E-unit works and even the headlight works!
I guess I need to see what I can salvage out of those cars that came with the junk 999!
Mike 
Dennis, I really like your signature...I think I'm going to adopt that as my personal motto!