Okay, yes Im.... new with a story

Welcome to the forum!

That's a lot of information you're looking for, bit difficult to convey it over forum posts.

You could try checking out the Greenbergs guides, the old Modeler's Handbook (by Lionel), and probably just browse through the forum and see what you can find. Everybody does it a bit differently so you'll probably never get a definitive answer on a lot of stuff.

I mainly need to know how do I run O scale tinplate, and a American Flyer standard guage? Power, track, ect. 

No difference in O scale tinplate.  It runs on O track.  Standard Gauge runs on Standard Gauge track regardless of manufacturer.  And you can use the same transformer for Standard Gauge trains that you use for O.

Are you buying vintage trains or modern reproduction trains?

Okay great, I didnt know that. I guess the more vintage tublar track threw me off with O. Im going with vintage because ultimately it for the museum train collection and we only deal with curating vintage. I just have to learn more about these guages. As far as standard, I juess I have to start with buying some track because I have plenty of MTH and Lionel transformers.

For Standard Gauge track, go with USA Track.  The MTH tubular track is really unreliable.

Warning thou, so you don't do what I did. in O gauge tin plate ( Lionel ) 810/2810 - 820/2820 they are a lot bigger than the rest of them ( freight cars ) so you don't get a bunch of small cars then get a big car and wonder what happened. 

As you can see the orange car is a lot smaller the brown car is a 812 the orange car is the size of most of them. There both O gauge thou. 

By the way I fell in love with the bigger ones. 

Alot of great info can be found in these forums, quite a few tinplate operators and collectors frequent this forum.

Another good source of info about all things toy trains including tinplate is tmbv.com.

Contact Steve "PAPA" Eastman - forum member and tinplate lover - he can put you in contact with local folks to assist you - oh, he is quite knowledgeable on tinplate

One additional item not discussed, is the choice of “vintage” track you chose.  Assuming you will be using the pretty standard 3 rail tubular track, there are two types.  The first type is “0” gauge, which has rail height of 11/16” high.  The other one is designated 027, which has rails at 7/16” high.  All locos/rolling stock will work on the “0”, but some will not run smoothly on the 027.

TeleDoc posted:

One additional item not discussed, is the choice of “vintage” track you chose.  Assuming you will be using the pretty standard 3 rail tubular track, there are two types.  The first type is “0” gauge, which has rail height of 11/16” high.  The other one is designated 027, which has rails at 7/16” high.  All locos/rolling stock will work on the “0”, but some will not run smoothly on the 027.

or, like Steve Eastman did, 5 rail STD gauge track to have the ability to run it all on one line.

Moonman posted:

... he can put you in contact with local folks to assist you...

you must be from one of those tiny east coast states.

all things i didnt know...thanks guys. For anybody that likes taking photos, what is the size diff in say a Standard wide gauge American Flyer compared to a Lionel TP O, and a Williams F3 O? These are what I will be dealing with soon.

so where is your museum?  hours of operation?
were you really born on Halloween?  cool.

btw, to address your confusion, it's "OK" after Old Kinderhook.  "Okay" is a *******ization brought about by anal retentive linguists.

cheers...gary

(ed:  sorry... that word is in my dictionary.  glad they at least kept in the "...ization" part...lol)

A word on MTH tubular standard gauge track: The quality of the EARLIER production was very good, and can be distinguished by the blued ties versus the black painted ones of the newer production. I have used both the old Antique Toy Trains standard gauge repro track and the early MTH production with great success. Currently, as stated above, USA Track is the best quality track available. I personally prefer tubular track with the Johnson repro Lionel rubber roadbed over the plastic MTH roadbed, as it adheres to my platform better and helps to quiet the trains.

overlandflyer posted:

btw, to address your confusion, it's "OK" after Old Kinderhook.  "Okay" is a *******ization brought about by anal retentive linguists.

cheers...gary

(ed:  sorry... that word is in my dictionary.  glad they at least kept in the "...ization" part...lol)

This etymology of OK is by no means universally accepted among us anal retentive linguists, who, btw, are not responsible for okay.

Our museum is California based, we are currently looking for a building but we exhibit at most comic cons,art shows, book shows, and we are represented in the Obama Library in Long Beach Ca. and we take our vintage video game collections to local childrens hospitals for terminal kids to have fun and play. Once Im more active here, Ill gladly show you guys our collections of almost everything you can think of including golden age 40s comics, music, sporting, and cinama.I didnt want to just come in promoting LOL..... I collect in areas at a time and now is the vintage trains turn. I work with our museum budget and I see this will kill it. Its up there with comic books ALMOST.

Sounds like a great, sharing program! Your museum project also sounds like an ambitious undertaking! GOOD LUCK!

I wish there was some "sharing" going on, Im doing all the buying, transporting, lifting, boxing, buying, buying and buying. We are 501c but its hard to find help in ANY way. the up side is giving  kids an hour or so of fun so they can forget about their conditions for a while.

Ha! Finally grew up enough to stop being so serious all the time, eh?

  Always research the motors. Most are AC/DC but some are DC only.  Rule of thumb for testing an unknown, use DC.  AC motors usually run fine on DC. No damage should occur if not.  But a DC motor ran on AC will burn up very quickly. An easy way to recall it is a battery will run near anything.  (but will also trigger an ac trains whistle/horn non-stop. A dc offset piggybacks on ac as a horn/whistle trigger.)  Long term issues, DC can cause sticky E-units; the plunger may need demagnetizing some day down the road (not hard)

I get wanting vintage track, but a nice display might also surfice well enough, and allow more examples to be shown better too.

  I mention it  because there are nice multi gauge tracks at GarGraves too . (5 rail, O & Standard gauge together on ties as one track, etc).   

(check out JagRick's dealer display and dealer layout copys and restorations. Post war mostly, but riddeled with ideas)

Learn about "Fat drive wheels", brands, and which turnouts accept them asap.  Marx 0-27 seem to be best., ETS seems to be ok too if you can find a distributor (Czk) Stay 0-36 and larger for the most compatibility. I don't even know which Lionel switches pass them. Only a few Lionels had fat wheels I think.

Note the difference between track gauges and "scale" of cars and locos. Though scale isn't often mentioned in tin, it obviously comes into play (e.g. the gondolas above, same gauge, different scale.)

Read up at the TCA website, Thors trains, etc... even NMRA though there isn't a whole lot there on tin, your likely to pick up something useful. 

Old threads here are very numerous, just work your way backwards in the tinplate listings; searching for sidetracks as you find them. 

Buy guides when you can. The prewar info online is kinda scarce imo.

this is going to be tough for me. Im diagnosed Dyslexia and dyscalculia and this makes technical things REALLY tough to understand. Dealing with electronics combined with numbers is basically another language to me. I'm literally studying the things you guys tell me. I looked up Lionel Standard gauge transformers and there are dozens of them, several names, sizes ect. With HO and O, I run direct with no DCC or any of that stuff so it's easy for me but this is a new world.
I have t call one of the members on here tomorrow, he says he's going to tell me some thing I need to kno..
Since I have been curating for the museum, tinplate trains and Harry Potter books are the only topics I knew totally nothing about.

How are you with drawings? Would it help some?  You can always ask where you need clarification. I just don't drawdraw as much as I used to with windows.  

  And fyi, I'm slightly dyslexic myself.  I mirror image stuff without thought if I'm not careful.  I even learned to write my name in mirror image before I did it right.  

Google Spellcheck does more harm than good imo.  Every word above here that "doesn't belong"  is Google (even though it's turned off) It changes words at random too. Lines out of sight change as well. 

The mismisspelli  (<"spellwreck" again) ... the misspelling is mostly me (ha take that spellwreck )

Its funny you ask, because I am an artist. Traditional, non-computer. As far as mirroring images, I'm the opposite, I can't copy anything by looking at it, I can't draw symmetry designs (I got a job drawing Transformers comic book but had to turn it down because robots require the ability to draw symmetry). I copy number wrong and misspell almost every other word. Organization, creativity, and compulsiveness are other overly enhanced traits that I inherited. These are the reasons I loved working at various museums, libraries, and in-store marketing jobs, the same reason I decided to form our museum. I get to exercise my good/bad habits.