Hi,
I have never seen a 726-54 painted yellow like this, it is factory because it was painted yellow before it was riveted to the clamp part.
Has anyone else seen a yellow on like this? see pic
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Interesting.
I have not seen a yellow one before.
I have seen some where the whole bulb chamber was yellow colored too, inside and out. The only purpose I can think of it is a coating to protect the metal from the corrosive 196 ammonium nitrate smoke pellets.
This was on eBay a couple of days ago.
I assumed that the yellow was either corrosion, smoke residue, or a coating to prevent corrosion or the smoke from sticking. If it is paint, the paint may be there to prevent the smoke from corroding the zinc alloy. This is not the first time I have seen this, so there are more of them out there.
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I have seen chambers with that yellow coating, but notice that the (turbine) lamp holder in the picture that David provided is black.
I do not think the yellow was paint on the chambers I have seen.
The chambers are die cast. The lamp holders have a die cast front, with sheet metal parts.
I think the colored ones are late production, as Lionel found out what the pellets were doing. The ones without the coating are the ones that are always pitted and sometimes the bulb holder has corroded in place and is nearly impossible to remove.
I assume that the '46 726s were all made between Toy Fair and shipping at the end of October 1946. Then they were never made again. What bothers me is that there would not have been any play time or customer feed back before they were out of production. So I wonder how Lionel would know that corrosion from the smoke was going to be a problem? There were a lot of new trains that were going to be made in 1946. My guess is all the smoke unit castings were made and in the warehouse befor the first loco rolled off the assembly. I have been involved in repairing antiques for many years. It is always the "why?" that can never be figured out.
