Lionel's 40' Flat with Sherman's

Blue Streak posted:

These arrived today. Thought I would share some pictures.

Overall I think they look fine. Standard heavy 40' flat with balsa wood top. The tanks are plastic and nothing moves. But I think they are okay

They come with 4 balsa wood blocks with double sided tape - I have not installed them.

The holes in the flat could take chain as they go all the way through.

Maybe some black paint on the frame behind the wheels. Again maybe this is correct - will again have to look through some books.

Overall I like them. Need to add some chains maybe - have to study that. The only thing I see wrong with the UP version is the built date on the flat 1951 oops. I am sure a few Sherman's were around then. But I was thinking WWII era. Personally these plastic tanks are pretty good. I have some metal ones I bought years ago but can't get to them to compare right now.

Joe

Pretty good, reasonable representation of an early production Sherman army tank.  It's highly possible and altogether every bit probable that Sherman's were transported to various Army bases in the early '50s for training exercises and/or oversea's deployment.

After all, I'm pretty sure that the U.P. still transports big fleets of kick-*** army tanks on flatcars to this day from an Army base in my neck of the woods.   

The sides of the hull of the tank should be green, but, if you want to improve the realism just a bit, paint the tires of the 6 lower tank wheels (boogies) black or dark gray.  they were covered in a rubber compound.  Also true of the three upper ones, but you can barely see those.

This particular "Sherman" can also be found in the 1923100 U.S. Steam LC set which I purchased, matches well with my Marx military training set from the fifties.

I wonder how these tanks would look with a little bit of DullCote sprayed on them. It would remove some of the gloss, and also give them more of a "painted" look. Might kick it up a notch in the realism department.

The Date of 1951 for the Up Flat would put the transport of Sherman tank during the Korean War . 

some weathering of the Tank might look more realistic 

if the barrel is solid at the end , you might drill it out a little .  

This is my 2 cents 

Nice looking car Blue Streak! Especially that Lionel flatcar! But I think I would substitute the tank that came with it for a Corgi Sherman. 

Dave,

Those were the tanks I was thinking about. I have about 6 of the ones in your last picture somewhere.

Would the Army really transport on flatcars that were not Army or DOT?  But the UP flat is dated 1951, it is in the middle of tthe Korean Conflict.  In that case any car that can transport them.

Dominic,

All the pictures I have seen regarding the WWII era tanks, jeeps, etc were transported on Railroad Company's flatcars (SP, Pennsylvania, UP, etc). I don't think those Army flatcars existed until later like the 60's or 70's - maybe later than that. I could be wrong but that is what I remember when I checked into what to order. I can't get to my books at the moment to verify.

...and then there were those other guys:

PD

Here are some tanks that I have done on flat cars.

Mine arrived today.  I like the flatcar but the Sherman  is just a toss on my eyes, I will get others to replace them.  They have tracks inside the sprockets that drive them looks like no effort was out into the tank.  They sure didn’t try on the Sherman, thumbs down on the price of this one.

Blue Streak posted:

Dominic,

All the pictures I have seen regarding the WWII era tanks, jeeps, etc were transported on Railroad Company's flatcars (SP, Pennsylvania, UP, etc). I don't think those Army flatcars existed until later like the 60's or 70's - maybe later than that. I could be wrong but that is what I remember when I checked into what to order. I can't get to my books at the moment to verify.

The military would indeed use whatever railroad which had equipment available during WWII.  I highly recommend Trains to Victory: America's Railroads in WWII by Heimburger and Kelly.

-Greg

I have a collection of WWII military train transports.  I will also run same vintage coal hoppers and boxcars.  Getting the train car built dates to be of the proper vintage is a little OCD ( or rather CDO - alphabetically correct as it should be) thing of mine.  It's all too easy to have rolling stock built dates after the war, but I avoid those.  These can be had however.

A little peeve of mine is that the train catalogs should show the "built date", but they don't.

I have picked up some Menards military rolling stock.  They have scale flatcars which helps.  Some of their loads are really cool (but not all of them realistic).  Their jeeps are great.   However they say built by Menards and the current year stamp.  How do I live with this?  I turn off my OCD switch and just enjoy their fun value and low, low prices.  In actuality, when they're running I can only read the built date if I run along side of them.  Given the pony/slant walls in my train room I would be banging my head at least twice for each loop of the layout.  I've tried squinting a lot, but blurring out the rest of the layout in order not to see the built dates seems to be somewhat self defeating.  I've thought about putting little American flag stickers over the Menards/built date, but it's hard to come up with 48 star flags.  (And, anyway, it seems risky in that it might destroy its collector value (you see, in 20 years they could be worth $5.00)).

So anyway, I fight the evil Axis powers with the best rolling stock I can.  I don't worry too much, for you see, I know how it turns out.

I wonder if any Japanese modelers ever model post bomb Hiroshima?

Alan

ncdave posted:

Nice looking car Blue Streak! Especially that Lionel flatcar! But I think I would substitute the tank that came with it for a Corgi Sherman. 

Agreed. I've got 5 of the Corgi Shermans (1/50). They're very nice.

At over $100 a piece for these flatcars. You think Lionel would have supplied a nicer tank instead of one that looks like it came out of a dollar store toy bin.

For the money. I'd be looking at the Mth versions or buy one of the previous run flat cars and grab the corgi tank off of eBay.

I was wondering about these, thanks for the pics. Waaaaaaaaaaaay to much money for the poor looking tank, IMO I think the ball was dropped here

No more thumbtack couplers!  Yeah!

Glad I didn't buy these the tanks are inferior looking to Corgi or the Hobbymaster ones that Mike used on his earlier releases. The flatcar is certainly not worth $139 dollars and the tanks look nothing like the pictures in the catalog. Lionel saw an opportunity to cheapen the product and increase profits. The original release of 40 foot flatcars are hard to find but certainly not worth $139.00.