An Odd IVES 3252 Locomotive Train99.com

An Odd Ives 3252 Engine.

The engine is an Ives 3252. Dark Olive Green with two brass plates on the side. But underneath the dark olive paint- like a Lionel 33- it's rubber stamped 3250 on the ends and sides under the ventilators. It looks like it could have been a brighter green paint- similar to a Lionel 152. It's also rubber stamped under the brass plates "The Ives Railway Lines" and "3250 NYC&HR." You can see the rubber stamped lettering under the paint and where it sticks out from under the sides of the plates. There is no paint on the hand rails or anywhere it shouldn't be.
The plates are worn around the edges- it's not paint but tarnish. The windows look like they had red paint on them, but it has crystallized and fallen off.

Here's two quick pictures of the engine.

Here's a picture of the engine from the side showing the brass plates. One has been removed to show the rubber stamped lettering underneath.

Here's a photo showing the 3250 lettering under the paint.

Dave McEntarfer sent me some information about this engine. Here are his comments:

"Ives constantly used up old equipment that was lying around to make up "new" pieces, they did it prior to 1910 and continued to do it up until 1930, when it was actually Lionel doing it. The dark green 3252 is Circa 1926-27. The 3250 was last made in 1925. In 1925 Ives started replacing the rubber stamping with brass plates. In 1925 the 3250 used the same shell as the 3252 and the number 3250 was stamped inside the impressions for the brass plate."
"It would not surprise me that if Ives still had some 3250s leftover from 1925 that they would use them for 3252s they made that year, the only thing that is suspicious from your description is that you said the lettering was "3250 NYC&HR". All of the late 3250s I've seen with indentations for the brass plate have lettering "MOTOR 3250" just like the brass plates. Another thing if the rubber stamping is still visible I would think that somewhere you should still be able to see the Salmon (light red) paint on the engine."

Dave is the President of the Ives Train Society, and runs a website devoted to Ives Trains. The Society's website has lots of pictures of Ives Trains (Kind of like what I'm doing my encyclopedia, but I only have two pictures of Ives trains, and they have hundreds- Here's a link to the Ives Train Society's Website.
Dave sent me two pictures to illustrate his comments.

The first picture is of a Salmon 3250 from 1925. Notice that it has square recessed indentations around the lettering.

Salmon 3250 from 1925.
Picture courtesy of The Ives Train Society

The second picture is of a normal 3252 from 1926-27. This is the same as my engine tries to be but has white or cream windows instead of the red or maroon mine had. The weird engine's window paint has crystallized and fallen off.

Normal 3252 from 1926-27.
Photo courtesy of The Ives Train Society

Based on a second e-mail from Dave and e-mails from a few other people (thanks for your advice) this weird Ives engine seems to be a 3250 shell made before 1925 repainted and assembled as a 3252 in 1926 or 1927. I took a plate off the side of the engine to confirm the lettering and the appearance of the slots. The slots appear to be factory cut, with no jagged edges or marks in the paint to suggest the plates were added after the engine left the factory. I will add a photo of the engine with the plate removed in a few days.
I want to thank everyone who sent me an e-mail about this weird engine. In a matter of days I have gotten a really good education about these little Ives engines from some really knowledgeable train collectors. I always enjoy the sharing of information about toy trains, and that is the primary reason I created my web site. I will have added the discussion board to my site, so anyone can post questions like this and also post pictures.

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