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Post 77 6-19-2021

Reviving 1930s Lionel 238 Streamlined Torpedo Locomotive with Marx motor and Tinplate Tender

I have owed a Lionel 238, the Loewy’s 1936 designed, torpedo streamlined body and old style metal tinplate tender for several years, origin unknown. It needed a motor and I found an old Marx four wheel one from a Marx 999 that seemed to work and fit. The Marx motor did not have the mount and two front wheels like the 999 does.

I have looked into adding a pair of wheels on the front and on the rear to make a 2-4-2 but could not come up with "something" that would work but believe if I can find a mount and set of wheels from a 999 they would work. They can be added later so for now I am going with a 0-4-0, which will run with no derailments of front or rear wheels.

A metal mount was made for the rear and front of the motor into the engine and J B Welded them in. Also made was a small metal tube to hold the head light, which is a 12v mini Christmas tree bulb, bulb holder, wire and socket. A small hole was drilled into the top of the metal hole to let hot air out and added a small piece of red clear plastic to make a little red glow on the stack. A locomotive coupler was installed.

The coal tender had a set of Lionel trucks, one with a Lionel coupler, were installed and a tender coupler was added to the front.

Motor holder shown below

Marx 999 motor and coal tender coupler shown below installed

The engine and tender were painted with flat darkest gray spray primer and then covered all with clear glossy paint. A small metal strip was labeled with "L I O N E L "letters and sprayed with clear. This was installed were the original engine had a strip labeled "Pennsylvania". I decal-ed the engine and tender as "Pennsylvania" and used the side strip to show "Lionel" as the manufacturer not the fictitious "Lionel Lines" as Lionel had done. The decals were sprayed with clear glossy paint to seal them on.

This picture shows the head light and the Red lighted smoke stack glow from the fire box

I wanted to also pull Marx tinplate cars as they are lighter and more typical of 1930s trains. The Torpedo tin coal tender got Lionel old style couplers so I made a tiny adapter from a paper clip shown below, to allow pulling Marx spade coupled cars. It simply has a loop to be held by the pin of the coupler.

This shows it hooked up to a Marx boxcar.

Below is my Marx cars tinplate train being pulled with the new to me Lionel 0-4-0 Torpedo stream lined steam locomotive. This is an easy pull for the low powered Marx 999 style motor in the Torpedo.