Wow! "Comrade Smatlak" what a great toy loco from the Soviet era. As the "wall began to come down and relationships with the US began to warm, I was privileged to be part of an "official delegation" to the USSR. We rode from Leningrad to Moscow on a train pulled by an engine very similar to yours (only green with red trim). Unfortunately for a railfan, railroads were considered "defense systems" and photographs were not allowed.
I was going over some of the items in my collection and I found this guy siting on my shelf, looking rather lonely. So just for fun I got him out and took some pictures. Don't be fooled by his red color, although the 114 in his same year did come in red, he was originally orange as is shown on the underside....some young man in the day wanted a red car and Dad or Grandad accommodated that with (old fashioned heavy enamel) paint. Anyway here he is, just for fun.
Unfortunately the couplers are missing and so is the brakewheel. However, the trucks are original, are properly (iaw Greenbergs nomenclature) 100 Series Type 5 trucks and he has both his sliding doors. This car was made between 1915 and 1917.
The neatest thing about this fellow is his underside. First it shows that the original color of the car was orange ( which is OK as car came in orange from the factory in same years), but the next part is the neat historical part. The bottom is embossed and (again IAW Greenbergs text on Standard Gauge) Lionel abandoned embossing about 1916. More importantly it is embossed " Lionel Manufacturing Company" which is a pretty solid dating characteristic. According to Ron Hollander in "All Aboard", Lionel Mfg Co became the Lionel Corporation on 22 July 1918. So this clearly sets this fellow at being made sometime from 1915 -1916.
What made this fellow so special to me was that he was a "host" gift to me from a friend of mine from NASA who came to our house for dinner in the 90's. So here is a toy train, from the earliest days of aviation (both Wright bros were still alive and active in 1917) given to me by an engineer then working on human space travel. COOL!
Best wishes
Don