Over the weekend I picked up what appears to be a homemade O Gauge wooden train set. There are 4 cars and an engine. The engine looks enough like the freight/passenger cars that I didn’t notice there was a separate engine car. Each car is about 15 inches long. The roofs are painted black with the rest of the cars and engine painted green. There is writing stamped on each such as Baltimore and Chesapeake railway Express Agency. Numbers 890 stenciled on the sides. They appear to be baggage mainly with passenger seats as part of the design. The engine is the most interesting as it is shaped just like the other cars all wood with the same stencil as the others only it also says United States Mail. Railroad Post Office. # 470. The front of the engine is absolutely flat with a window on either side and 2 windows on the front where you can see the engineer sitting. There is a cow catcher on the bottom front and a headlight on top. I checked the light dome out and it may be painted brass, But other than the trucks the light dome may be the only metal on the train. The lamp itself is an old indicator light that has the metal connecters mounted on the sides of the lamp that gets pinched by the socket. The motor has me the most spooked. It is a cork screw gear that is part of the armature that comes down into a brass 4 wheel truck. The cork screw gear turns another gear which now drives a chain which turns the wheels. The engine has 2 - 4 wheel trucks and what would be the mounts for the center rail rollers. The front truck and roller seems to supply power to the light and the back roller is for the motor. The cars though they look like the engine car are different as their trucks are each 6 wheels and when I scratch the green paint off of them are actually brass. My question is, What the heck do I have here?
