"Consoli" streamliner

I can't give you much info, but there are a number of mentions of them in the TCQ archives. I believe they made the nice aluminum Zephyr that was originally made by Western Coil & Electric. They also made some O tin passenger cars. There was a set on e-bay a week or so ago in Blue Comet colors, but I am not sure how big they were. They seem to have produced their stuff in the 70's & 80's.

Hopefully someone else will fill in the many blanks.

Steve

Thanks Steve, that's interesting.  I love it that the history of American tinplate is full of these small, almost one-off outfits.  

At the same time, I find it hard to understand the logistics of something like this.  If you or I got the idea to make an O-gauge streamliner, how would we even begin?  

Is there such a thing as small foundry companies who will custom-cast a few dozen of something like this?  How about the dies to stamp out a tinplate car?  Would we have to make our own tooling, like McCoy did, or does the infrastructure exist for small custom jobs?  

Presumably you would have to have professional engineering drawings if you were going to go to a custom manufacturer...   I would have to assume that on a small run like these,  you wouldn't come close to making a profit or even breaking even?  A labor of love!

How did someone like Art Varney get their tinplate manufactured?  For that matter, how is Joe Mania doing it now?  

As I recall the Consoli Brothers advertised in Classic Toy Trains in the 1990's.

But then again, 'as I recall', there was a show on PBS called the "Ice Cream Show" and I could have sworn a man that collected ice cream novelty lids said "They don't make chocolate like that anymore", turns out I was wrong, I DVRed it, he never said it.

I bought one from them the copy of the Burlington Zephyr.  He managed to buy all the old inventory of parts of Western Coil & Electric.  No motors so he had produce them.  The Boston/Providence would have been his own production because as far as I know Western Coil & Electric only made the Zephyr, which show up on ebay

Consoli was always at York with a small operating layout featuring his streamliners - ran great. I'm not sure of the exact years, but I only saw him back in the era when the grandstand building was the Yellow Hall. He was always in the center aisle near the front entrance.

Jim

I don't know how Joe does it today, but Art relied on a small network of expert craftsmen and shops to build his tinplate trains.  Of particular note is Dick Mayer, who as you know produced RichArt tinplate trains in partnership with Art. 

I don't know about Art, but Dick was an "old school" machinist and when I visited and toured his shop it was filled with a wide variety of old machine tools, most of which were built in Germany in the early 1900s.  He used these to develop the tooling he then used in machine presses to punchout the tinplate parts required to build RichArt toy trains. 

Those parts Dick didn't or couldn't fabricate himself, he either purchased from other craftsmen who already made them or farmed out their production to small shops around the country.  For example, I saw on a shelf in Dick's shop a small stack of raw 1134 brass boiler castings.  These Dick had contracted with a small foundry to produce for him having provided the foundry with the patterns they needed to make the sand cast molds into which molten brass was poured to create the solid brass boiler castings.  Once he had received back the raw castings, Dick would then machine the castings into the finished parts he used to make RichArt's reproduction 1134 steam engines.

This is a subject which hopefully Arno will cover in much greater depth when he finally publishes his book on Modern Era Standard Gauge.

Bob

Antonio Consoli harmlessly picked up a Western Coil & Electric Zephyr at York in 1977. It was missing a few parts and had the wrong motor, but he was intrigued with the streamliner having never seen on before. In desperation, he wrote to the WC&E company and asked if they had any parts. The gentleman at WC&E said the parts had been locked up for over 40 years and not worth a mans time to search for parts. But he did offer to sell all the molds, tooling and parts inventory. An inventory was sent and there were enough original parts for about 25 power cars and observations, sans motors. Consoli contacted members of the TCA about interest in the set (see attached letter). He offered the 2-car set with original castings for $150 and an additional $25 would buy the coach made from the original mold. He had enough interest on the streamliners and in 1978 bought the lot of tolls and parts from WC&E. That's when Consoli Family Train Company of Toms River NJ, was started. Antonio kept his promise to the members who had interest in the train and supplied them with the train for $150 in an original box, no matter what it cost to make it. He set up a small foundry in his garage to make parts. Sourcing the motor was a bit harder since it was originally farmed out to the Barber-Coleman Company. Then, a fellow collector gave him the part number of the motor and he was able to contact BCC and get motors. The motors are induction motors, no brushes! Not sure how many sets were made, but he did make them for a handful of years, even some bronze cast Zephyrs in 1988.

He branched out and made the Comet which hojack has pictured, I'm not sure when that was made, but I believe I have that info somewhere. It was later in the Consoli line for sure.

Hope this helps.

ARNO

PS - As far as Art Varney is concerned, he was an incredible sheet metal man. He was the man who made the tooling for the early Mayer & Varney Enterprises Ives 3245 long cab. He also was the man responsible for all the sheet metal in the Varney-Sirus line of AF & Ives reproductions. A very talented metal artist.

Arno,

Thank you for the information.

Jim

Arno,

How much of the tooling and metalwork in the RichArt line of tinplate toy trains was Art responsible for and how much of it was Dick responsible for?

Also, after Dick's and Butch's deaths, can you tell us who purchased all the RichArt tooling and parts remaining in Dick's workshop?

Bob

Arno, that's pretty amazing, you must have had to do some digging to find this information.  Thanks.