Has any body ever buy a box of junk trains?

I look in the junk boxes under the table all the time. My favorite thing is getting a broken train cheap and then bringing it back to life. A friend used to call them my broken wing birds.

I always look under the tables. But most times junk is really junk.

only at york.....-jim

Bought these from a friend...

30 years of sitting in a box with plenty of mouse poop. Cleaned up pretty well.

I never look under the tables. I have found that it really is junk and that's why it is under the table! If I did bend down I probably would not be able to get back up without help!

yup love those junk boxes! bought a beat up early 675 missing boiler front but otherwise complete for 20 bucks, just very rusty, i wanted it for parts, put it on the track anyway and the smoke unit came to life! turns out after cleaning it was in better shape then my other one.

Dave

I look for boxes of junk at shows. I call it "dumpster diving".  Some you win, some you lose. Part of the fun.

Wow!!You might be able to bring it back to life.Clean and oil the motor.I didn,t know lionel had a babyruth boxcar.I had one in a tyco ho set.

Now thats a switch.Just when you think you seen it all.

Since I like to repair trains, I purchase junk trains all the time, individually or by the box. Have I ever sold a repaired train back to the person from whom I purchased it? - probably not, but I never kept track.

Sure, that's how I've picked up some things that I couldn't afford in workable condition. A little cleaning, a little repair and some parts replaced, and eventually you'll have something nice for a fraction of the cost of something rated VG. Hey, I'm an operator not a shelf collector.

Has any body ever buy a box of junk trains?

Oh yes did I ever.The outside of the box read Acela. Expensive junk!

Scott Smith

I like to buy 'For Parts' lots of ebay or shows. I often salvage many a good item from them. I once bought a lot of freight car trucks, detail parts and some Grandt line. When I got the 'lot' it was packed in a MTH box car body as the shipping container!!!!! It made a great box car after I made a chassis/frame for it.

It's the B&O car here.....the Weaver car was a salvage too....

Yes I prefer digging in a junk box never know what may be there

Only once did I make a "gold strike" in  a junk box under the table, and this was

at York in that banquet hall open show downtown on Market?? Street, probably back in the 1980's.  I think I was set up upstairs in the mezzanine, and after unloading on

my table walked around the area before going downstairs.....there was a large box

under a table, and I lifted the flap and saw an extruded aluminum AMT passenger

car, I think Santa Fe, as I was only interested in western roadnames, and another heavy metal car painted tuscan.  There were obviously more cars in the box, and the guy said, "Take it all for ????", a no longer remembered but insignificant amount  I did and took it out and put the large and heavy box in my car trunk.  I don't remember exactly what the several extruded cars were, which I still have...but I discovered the several painted cars were the cast aluminum AMT cars, the first made, and lettered for Pennsy.  I offered them to a friend, who was into Pennsy, but wasn't interested in these old collectible cars, so I sold them on eBay, for a significant amount.

LOL, I had a feeling you were gonna throw that one in there, Scott! 

Do I ever? Now that I have more room.......look out. There's a big show this weekend. I have four friends going with one thing in mind, one or more big boxes (each!).

 God Bless,

"Pappy"

If you mean new, then I have to go with any Lionel RTR set. 

that's the best part of the show for me.

Most of Gabe's prewar and postwar is resurrected. His masterpiece so far is a 224 I got him as a joke--it was horrendously corroded, but the wheels would turn ever so faintly, and I wanted to see what would happen. It runs now. We had to rebuild the tender and paint it (not much "re" to it) and we really ought to repainted the engine in the right gunmetal and make the tender match.

My favorite is still his old 2056. Somebody ran it nearly to shreds. One of the screws was replaced with a brass one with the head ground to match the others, so it meant a lot to the original owner.

I have never bought a wholebox as a box - but I have left a show/swap meet with a box of "junk" trains that I bought one or two at a time from various sellers there.  I buy them to cannibalize for can motors, trucks, and parts, etc. 

I do the same thing, but on ebay.  My best one was buying a group of postwar lionel accessories:

operating freight station

cattle corral

gateman

barrel ramp

semaphore

part of a culvert loader

and something else....

picked it up for about $30, spent about $20 on parts, kept the barrel ramp and semaphore for myself, sold everything else, ended up still making about $30 profit.

been there, done that. Had two instances.

1) Traded some HO stuff for a box of O gauge Lionel Postwar locos and rolling stock,

got em cleaned up. went to the very next show, had the loco running and smoking, the previous owner came over to my board and said, Is that the loco I traded you??? I said Yep. He said. you want to sell it back to me. Nope! there was also rolling stock that I cleaned up and run at shows.

2) Had a guy come up to my board with a box of "junk". It was literally junk and somebody had been abusive with these trains. had a starter set loco in the mix. I told him, the only thing in the box that was worth anything was that start set 2-4-2 loco and that was only worth about $25. he said SOLD. Bought the box. had a postwar whistle tender that someone had melted the shell. Replaced the shell with a new repo, cleaned up the whistle, she works like a champ. replaced a truck on the starter set loco tender. Now run that at shows. cleaned up another small tender as a back up. so all in all, got a new loco with three tenders.

Most of the postwar locos I run are from junk boxes or boxes on the floor under dealer tables that I dug through to get locos nobody else wanted. Kinda Like Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree. All my locomotives are Little Charlie Brown Christmas Trees.

My favorite antique dealer got in the 3 passenger cars from the Lionel General set, all in good shape and reasonably priced so I bought them. Later he ragged out the engine -what a mess !!  The front end was all but gone but the drivers were there and the stack but I bought it anyhow. Brought it home, cleaned it up and it ran !! Still lacks a pilot, cylinders and the 4 wheel truck but I put a 2 wheel truck I had plus I added a lead weight and it runs OK. Had plans to reconstruct the front end or find a parts engine but hasn't happened yet. The story i got was that a young kid(who must have a problem) got in to his grandfather's collection and threw things against the wall. I keep looking at General engines but too much $$ when I have my running wreck.  Some day.