PW 3830 OPERATING SUBMARINE

They are rubber band powered.

The nose turns to wind it up.

Its been many years since I operated one. As I recall, they work fairly well in the bathtub

It seems odd that you cannot find it in your Greenberg book.

Sounds like you've got it. There is a lock toward the propeller (don't have the  car in front of me right now) that allows you to spin the nose and keep the band wound up I think.

The nose likes to fall off of mine while riding on the flatcar over my less than perfect trackwork. I solved that by wrapping one wrap of electrical tape around the "collar" that goes into the sub body.

Here's the "cover" of the last TCA e-train magazine:

http://www.tcaetrain.org/artic.../2011fall/index.html

J White

I just kept the rubber bands wound up enough to hold the nose in place.

I had one of the original cars and you used about 10 rubber bands for the propulsion system.   I never had trouble with the nose falling off.  

If you thought it worked well in a bath tub, you should have seen it in a swimming pool.   You did need to rinse it off well to get rid of the chlorine.  I think the weakest part of the toy was the foam float.  It was open cell (like stuff florists use) and tended to break down over time.   Good news was replacement foam was easy to come by and easily replaced.  NOTE: there were two versions of the sub model, operational and non operational.  You could also buy the sub kit as a separate item.

The sub model was actually pretty close in design to a real Navy sub, the X1.  These are pictures of the sub being delivered/installed at the sub museum at Groton CT.   I don't know if the Navy ever transported the sub by rail during it's service career.  The photo's show it being taken off a heavy duty flat bed that delivered it to the museum.

Thanks fir all the info. My delay in responding has to do with my forum settings. for some reason I didn't get the replies sent when they occurred. I'll figure that out next.

I did find it in the greenberg book after all it is 3330, I was looking for 3380, the number on the sub and the car.  Your insights have been helpful.

Thanks again

ralph