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Messages - Terry

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331
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.

332
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. 

333
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.

334
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.

335
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. 

336
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?

337
General Discussion / Re: Next O Gauge train project
« on: July 11, 2021, 11:37:49 AM »
The weight pulls open the couplers. Try the car at the back of the train.

338
General Discussion / Re: Interesting Auction Items
« on: July 09, 2021, 10:27:00 PM »
That's a power supply. You measure the power by the heat given off when the acid burns a hole through the floor.


339
General Discussion / Re: Interesting Auction Items
« on: July 09, 2021, 07:36:02 PM »
Here's another photo of early Lionel trains from that archive:

 


I bet you could date this photo based on the 2 7/8ths gondola being metal and a dummy. 1903 to 1905. Probably 1904-05 because of the color.

The Clark Hillclimber Car is nice.  There's some cool toys in the picture.

Here's the auction:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/114879683569

340
General Discussion / Re: Next O Gauge train project
« on: July 09, 2021, 07:28:53 PM »
They ain't no good if they ain't loaded.

341
General Discussion / Re: Next O Gauge train project
« on: July 09, 2021, 04:43:17 PM »
The turrets always aim at the caboose so the loco is not damaged if the cannon is accidentally fired. The caboose is much cheaper than the loco.




342
General Discussion / Re: Next O Gauge train project
« on: July 09, 2021, 12:03:37 PM »
I think you get chain from Micheal's or Hobby Lobby.

Looks good.



343
General Discussion / Re: Interesting Auction Items
« on: July 07, 2021, 11:48:20 AM »
Hmmm.

I sold all mine so I can't look at them.

We'll leave my statement as an unproved assumption then.

344
General Discussion / Re: Interesting Auction Items
« on: July 06, 2021, 02:34:01 PM »
I don't have that book either.  Look at your tank cars under a bright light and you can see scratches in the litho.

345
General Discussion / Re: We're burning up !!
« on: July 05, 2021, 07:03:05 PM »
Mike, you need to worry about the boxes not the trains. Here in AZ the boxes just fall apart. I've pulled boxes from attic crawl spaces that were so dried out they crumbled at a touch.

The corrugated boxes de-laminate. Labels fall off. The boxes and paper give off cellulose gas that reacts to bare metal, zinc plated metal, and to some paints and inks. (I commonly find nice boxed postwar Lionel locos with green scum on the valve rods.  There are many Hot Wheels cars brand new in the blister pack with damaged frames and graphics from the outgassing of the cardboard.)

I have 4 prewar Madison cars that were LNOB when I got them in 1996. The cars got ruined because they were wrapped in the white foam used to pack apples and something ATE into the paint. The boxes were complete with all flaps, but now the flaps are just falling off.

After seeing the Madison car boxes last spring, I sold a bunch of the boxes I had and kept the trains. God knows what is happening inside the file box of old catalogs. Those might be in a plastic box. Does that make it worse or better?

Think about this. . . I packed my trains up and moved them from one air-conditioned room to another. I packed them in Feb/March of 2019. All the early period trains were unpacked by April 2019. I'm still unpacking the trains that go on the layouts now in June 2021. The newsprint is dried out and easily tears. The older paper in boxes packed 2-3 years ago is falling apart. 

I tried years ago to get an archivist to do an interview with me years ago about preserving these old toys, but couldn't find anyone.


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