ID of Marx Freight Cars

I have gotten the couplers from Grossman several times, it is not unusual to get items at shows with missing parts.  You will need the springs.  Tell him what you have; it looks like your couplers are metal, the springs for the metal and plastic coupler are a different size.

Installing them is about a 5 minute job, you will need a needle nose plyer.  You might want to get some spare wheels and axles too...

Marty

If you acquired a Santa Fe set. and it is as large as the Unique "Rock Island" AA

pair, you must have gotten the litho tin AA #21 Marx F units.  The plastic #1095

Santa fe diesels were available with a B unit and sometimes came as AA. AB. and

ABA multiple units in sets.  They are smaller than the #21's or the Uniques, and no

B units were made for the #21's.

Freight sets with the #21's came with the "high" trucks as shown on your GAEX

box car.

That's a colorful and charming set.  The truck type is referred to as the "D" type and is from the early fifties.

Since you mention the protruding stub it sounds like you have the type of coupler that is only a little over an inch long (much shorter than the usual Marx Automatic Coupler, as the company called it.)  As far as I know this one is not being reproduced.  Robert Grossman may have some used ones.  You never know what he'll come up with!

Thanks for all the assistance in sorting out exactly what I have since usually I know what I am getting myself into. The AB set is the tin AA #21 units and my terming it an AB set was a brain glitch. Knowing that the trucks are a D type is enormously helpful as well as knowing the shank length of the coupler is shorter than the norm..( I was pretty impressed on their close coupling just on a visual basis). I suppose the trucks themselves were the biggest surprise in terms of their height. They remind me of the Prewar AF passenger cars and their respective "high water" trucks they have..has a certain charm though..The goal is to get the consist ready for the annual Christmas Tree layout..time, as always, seems to be flying. I really appreciate all the responses.. Much thanks.

Bruce 

Bruce, "good eye" on noting the unusual height of those trucks.  You're right.  It's another case of Marx extending the use of a product, as the GAEX and the C&O bodies are actually part of the 3/16 (S) Scale line, which came on smaller, nicely scaled and detailed trucks.  The caboose is from the Seven-Inch line dies, most of which were mounted on a 4-wheel frame.  But Louie put 'em all together with large diesels that are about 1/4" scale. 

the D trucks were likely made to generally raise the scale cars up a bit higher to fit in with the larger #21 ATSF diesels which were themselves produced to compete directly with the Unique Arts sets claiming to be the largest tinplate trains available.

it should be noted, however, that the coupler heights between B and D trucks are compatible as you can see in the picture below of a pair of Cities Service 3/16" scale tank cars on both scale. B (left) and high, D (right) trucks.

the GAEX boxcar was also made in two different versions...

the "DF" version on D trucks seems to be the more commonly seen.  in fact, the only place i've ever seen the "Gaex-DF" yellow stripe version on D trucks was in a B&O diesel set.  and just to finish the thought, just the opposite seems to be true of this car on scale, B, trucks.  the "Gaex-DF" version is more common than the "DF" only stripe.

if you really want to go nuts, you can also look for both right hand (top frame) and left hand wound (middle frame) truck springs...

though as you can see in the last frame, toward the end of the die lifetime, it gets hard to tell what you have.

not as many scale cars were made with D vs B trucks, but most are not hard to find.

cheers...gary

Thanks Gary for the helpful background story as to how this really huge Marx uber-O scale line of products came about. I should have put two and two together when they matched the size of the Unique Arts stuff I have. I knew that Unique Arts at some point was taken seriously by Marx as a potentially formidable competitor and if I remember how the story went, they were bought out. It seems that once Unique was out of the picture, this line of large equipment went by the wayside, although I never equated their huge size and odd trucks with U.A stuff. It never occurred to me. Duh..

I really like the heft and size of this that dwarfs all other stuff on O gauge track.

To illustrate this, here is a photo of the engine next to a Large Scale live steam Ruby..

All this came about by way of Steve E saying he thought they ( The 21 Warbonnets) were the finest example of lithography Marx made, which got my attention.

After the purchase, I have to agree with him and wonder why the Unique Arts diesels made the inclusion in Rodger Carps book 101 Classic Toy Trains, and these did not..(?). Of course I just purchased some more cars..at bargain basement prices on the Bay, which makes me reconfirm this was a real outlier of a product line...not much appreciated ( to use a pun)..How are your clockworks coming along?

Bruce