Hello and Merry Christmas to everyone! It's been a long time since I popped in here. My interest has waxed and waned over the last nearly 20 years I've been here(joined when I was 14!) but never gone away completely.
In any case, in the past year I have moved states, started a new job, and most importantly gotten married(she was the motivation behind a lot of the other changes). Unfortunately for now, for lack of space, all of my trains are in storage, but definitely not forgotten.
I got a really nice surprise the other day, though, when my new grandparents-in-law stopped by with a Christmas gift-a boxed Lionel set that they'd bought to put under their Christmas tree when they got married in 1964. Needless to say, I was both excited and just about blown away for a lot of reasons, but this is certainly a special piece to me. It's set #19332 with a 2029 and a standard boxcar/hopper/tank car/caboose assortment. As best as I can tell, it's a Sears set. BTW, my grandfather-in-law was thrilled to see me(by video) put a few drops of oil on the engine, power it up, and have it take right off aside from the smoke unit looking like it had a half a bottle of pellets in it(I heated it up, dumped some liquified pellets out while it was hot, pulled the piston and cleaned it, and poked through the piston hole a bit, and it sort of works but I really want to take it apart completely and clean out as much pellet residue as I can).
In any case, the "prize" of the set seems to be the 3666 Minuteman car. As best as I can tell, this was a Sears exclusive also-rather than firing a rocket, it fires small silver-painted wood shells(I have 3-it looks like it came with 4). Information seems scarce on it, and I don't have any of my reference books here. Can anyone here provide any information on this? Also, I'm seeing a couple of color varieties of this. This one is bright white and the doors are a sort of medium blue color.
Also, activating the plunger will raise the rocket some and open the doors, but it won't fire unless the rocket is pulled further up. I've never had one of the Minuteman cars in any form, so the mechanism is totally unfamiliar to me. The dashpot looks greasy, and when the plunger is activated the canon rises slowly, so I'm wondering if it just needs a good cleaning. I'm afraid to poke too much around in it, though.
Here are photos of it
