Brought a Lionel 253 electric Loco back to life, tell me what you think as this is my first 253 restore.
Purchased a badly painted/modified Lionel 253 from eBay for $39.00 plus shipping.
The wheel were good just rusted a bit, the previous owner put in a e-unit that was secured to the motor with wire and soldered in (e-unit did not function, this was not a 253E).
There was no manual reversing switch and had broken trim and the collector plate was bad.
The paint was so heavy and bad that the shell had to be pried of the frame after the screws were removed. Did a quick rewiring and the motor did run.
Removed the couplers, brass number/window/grill plate, trim, and then stripped all the paint off.
What was interesting was the brass plate was painted and re-lettered by hand. When I stripped the paint of the black Lionel letter stayed on. Used “0000” steel wool and the brass shined up great. Cleared the brass with a gloss clear (did not want to paint the window/. grill with the cream color as I liked the brass).
Cleaned up the rest of the Brass trim with the steel wool the cleared painted them.
Decided to paint the frame maroon and the shell terracotta (like the colors)
Re-wired the motor using a 20 gauge stranded super flex wire (has a silicon jacket and about 60 strands per wire). Great stuff.
I also wired the lights together (using 20 gauge cloth cover wire so that only one wire for the voltage and one wire for the ground will come down. The reason for the ground wire on the lights is to have a good connection. The wire used coming down from the lights to the frame and switch is the super flex wire. After this was installed I decided to hang a inferior light in the cab (painted the bulb that face the ground black so that it will not shine directly down but to the sides. Also put a small resistor in series with this light to tone done the brightness and wire these to the headlights.
The Brush, field wires coming down all are connected to the switch with the super flex wire.
The engine is a strong runner. I also took photos of the various stages of the restore, was able to post just one.
My opinion is If a Lionel prewar is already painted, that I feel it is OK to paint and modified as one wishes.
The engine, parts and time that I have invested in this project I will never get back, but the satisfaction of bring a 85 to 90 year old engine back to life is the best part. Imagine that some kid back in the 20’s may have got this engine as a Christmas gift, only if the engine could talk.
