Messages

316

General Discussion / Re: What to do?

« on: July 22, 2021, 01:17:14 PM »

I was thinking about cutting the signal bridge in half to make a single, but one of the side effects of age is knowing my limits.

Speaking of volume. . .  This weekend is the first big train swap meet in AZ since the pandemic. There was a small mostly scale show in early May, but this is the first tinplate show. As of last week they had 65 percent of the tables sold. Usually they are sold out 2-3 months in advance.

One growing problem I see is the lack of workers for the club shows. In Tucson they aren't doing the big 2-day trade show hall meets anymore because the club is all old men and they don't have the energy to run them. 

I'll have a better idea of the state of the AZ train market after the show.

I heard the York plans for this fall, and decided I'd wait until next spring.

317

General Discussion / Re: What to do?

« on: July 22, 2021, 12:30:58 AM »

Another reason for the grouping you mention is the sheer quantity of items to be sold.

We're going into a really weird time to be train collectors. The common trains are dropping in value and the drop is going to accelerate as more hit the market. Inflation is picking up.

I made some dwarf signals for my layout last weekend. I spent about 3 hours on them, and once the humidity and constant promises of rain stops I'll paint them. I had fun.

 

The silver parts are cheapo castings made by the guy who sold them at York. Trickel? The black head came on a bent up signal bridge I got last week.

318

General Discussion / Re: Interesting Auction Items

« on: July 19, 2021, 05:05:05 PM »

ok.

319

General Discussion / Re: Interesting Auction Items

« on: July 19, 2021, 03:49:56 PM »

Mike - your lettering looks crisper. Go look at the supersized picture in the auction.

Maybe it's the sweat in my eyes?

320

General Discussion / Re: Interesting Auction Items

« on: July 19, 2021, 12:12:44 PM »

Here's an interesting 800 Boxcar.  The lettering on the sides looks wrong.   It also has LL stamp on end and corp stanp under frame.

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/255059204811

321

General Discussion / Re: Any other collections

« on: July 18, 2021, 08:50:31 AM »

The grader goes with the 3 orange trucks on either side of it as a 4-peice set from 1957ish in the Tonka State Hiway set.  Not the dump with the yellow bed and sandloader on the far left. I bought that with a bunch of trains and it was in a large box. I thought it was the original box, but it was a box for a rare Hoover Vacuum.

Tonka made a truck with a low-boy trailer for the grader to ride on. I had one from a different buy, but it was beat up and then painted over the dirt so I sold it.

322

General Discussion / Re: Any other collections

« on: July 17, 2021, 10:00:05 PM »

I've collected a lot of different things over the years, but I've never collected food stamps. The one time I looked into them, I was told I had too many cars. I'm back up to 3 now. For 18 months I was down to only 2 vehicles.

I have 1954-62 Tonka trucks above my kitchen cabinets:

 

 

The red dump truck with sand loader is from 1962/63, the rest are all from the 1950s. The green one  on the far right is a Smith Miller Armored car. It's not a Tonka but it's neat.

These all came from the original owners as a result of me asking people if they have any old toys when I was in their homes buying trains. Before I did the Tonkas I had a nice group of Doepke vehicles acquired the same way.

To me it's about the seeking. I like the Tonka step vans. They made about 15 different ones with advertising on them. In 3-4 months you could buy a nice example of each on eBay. No challenge to that.

The one collection that was fun was the advertising button collection. Every time I saw someone with a button I asked for it. I did that for years and filled two 5-gallon buckets with them. I still find them in drawers and mixed in with other clutter.

323

General Discussion / Re: Train Buying Stories and Rants.

« on: July 17, 2021, 01:04:53 PM »

I also see the same things on ebay over and over and over.

Train shows are the same thing. There is a guy here that brings the same exact items to every meet with free tables since at least 1994. About 15 years ago, I asked him about it, and he said he was coming to the meet so he might as well bring something to put out.

Speaking of ebay and sales. . .

ebay has a new report that compares the  seller (Me) with all sellers in each category. This is called the Listing Quality Report on the performance tab of the hub.

I sell HO scale diecast toy cars. In that category I am 221 ranked by sales volume out of 61,500 sellers. I sold about $800 worth of cars in the past month.

In the Automotive Service Manuals  category, I see "Your rank by sales (GMV) value: 108 out of 8,310 sellers in this category and condition."  I've never sold anything in that category and only have the one book listed at $12.  I think this means 8202 sellers have books listed for under $12 that didn't sell.

. . .

324

General Discussion / Re: Interesting Auction Items

« on: July 16, 2021, 07:15:31 PM »

Here's something cool.

 

107 direct current reducer. I have one of these, but not the box. 

That should be expensive, but I doubt many collectors care. In fact, I wouldn't have bought mine except it came with trains I wanted. 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/255054806415

325

General Discussion / Train Buying Stories and Rants.

« on: July 16, 2021, 06:26:16 PM »

Now that the sniffles pandemic is over, I'm back to buying trains from the public. 

I got 6 boxes of standard gauge on Wednesday morning including a olive green 38. I have a nice one, but put it aside for trades or whatever.  I took 3 500 series freight cars downstairs for the layout along with two 205 LCL containers.  Otherwise mostly junk, but fun to dig through.

This morning I had a call from a man with a late 1950s train set. He told me he'd researched it online and he had a Lionel 58600 loco and some cars. I recognized the cars as postwar cars, but not the 58600. A google search shows 58600 is a LCCA reissue of the 208 blue Santa Fe AA. When I asked if the skirts were broken, he asked what the skirts were. When I asked him what he wanted for the train he refused to say. I told him to do more research and then hung up on him.

It's very difficult to buy trains from people who research them online.

An interesting note is that 3 of the deals I did Wednesday were older people who had layouts and then downsized. They kept the trains after moving,  but, now that they are in their 80s, they are getting rid of them. All three took my initial offer with no discussion, and two of them threw in additional trains after the deal was made.

Note those three men had layouts. I still have a hard time buying trains from men who just bought trains and put them in closets. I'll have to pay more attention to this in the future.

I had a local train guy over today with his dog. His dog comes right in the house and goes and sits by the pantry door.  That's where the treats are! The dog gets a nice waffle biscuit and then we dig through the trains for a while.

326

General Discussion / Re: Home made turntable

« on: July 16, 2021, 12:19:55 PM »

Somebody will make a killing selling a drop in replacement for the MTH boards.

The ho and n modellers can buy any board and then download the sound files from the NMRA website and put it any loco. You just select the boards based on the max. amperage pulled by the motor. 

327

General Discussion / Re: Locomotive wheels

« on: July 16, 2021, 12:12:55 PM »

I understand it to be that if there was any lead in the mixture it will fail.

If you look at the different casting marks some houses never fail - this is said to be because they did not do castings with lead. The bases for 57 and 58 streetlamps are good examples of clean castings.

A lot of the McCoy trains and repro wheels from the mid 1970s are now junk because the castings failed.

This is called zinc pest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_pest

That article says manufacturers knew of the problem by 1923.

Speaking of this, on Wednesday I saw a prewar Marklin 800SK loco with a solid casting on both the loco and tender. I've never seen one that wasn't in peices. Few Marklin HO locos from before 1950-52 survive the zinc pest. For the better locos like the crocodile,  collectors will buy many damaged peices to put together a nice one. This one was purchased used by a US soldier in late 1945. The son said his dad came home in Jan of 1946.

328

General Discussion / Re: Interesting Auction Items

« on: July 13, 2021, 01:28:15 PM »

Here's something for Jim:

Two lots with Madison Hardware wartime cars:

Boxcar and wood flat:

https://connect.invaluable.com/stout/auction-lot/mixed-group-of-lionel-prewar-o-gauge-trains-inclu_86A482D930

Boxcar and wood flat with 820 type searchlight:

https://connect.invaluable.com/stout/auction-lot/mixed-group-of-lionel-prewar-and-o-gauge-and-repr_04A4B5DAB1

I never had a wood flatcar or wood searchlight.

329

How To and Technical Information / Re: LED lighting

« on: July 13, 2021, 01:20:21 PM »

For LED you need DC. The ZW is AC, and will burn out the LEDs.

You can put a cheap bridge rectifier into the circuit to convert the power to DC. A 5 Amp rating on the rectifier is enough. With a just a rectifier you risk damaging the LEDs if you turn the voltage up too high.

A better solution is a constant intensity circuit designed for a 12 volt bulb. That will put out 12V regardless of the input voltage. A simple diode or a bridge rectifier might be needed to make DC from AC. I have these circuits in my bins for 1.5 volt and 4.5 volt bulbs, but don't know if they are commercially made for 12V systems.

Personally, I'd just make bulb sockets or, if you only have a few buildings, buy ready made sockets and use regular toy train bulbs. 

330

Classifieds / Re: Rules for Posting Classifieds

« on: July 12, 2021, 02:48:26 PM »

Jim -Go ahead and send flyers out. I can't think of any changes that would iprove the results. can you?