Hello Tinplate world ...for decades out of the corner of my eye I've seen these Russian train sets ..... always with the preface of "rare" ....... a quick check on ebay will show you "rare" Russian trains seem to be always available for a price .... I bought a Russian engine without the heading of "rare" so it was much more reasonable....to play with . On the WWW you see folks claiming made in the 50s' , 60s' ...only 3000 made ( that is a heck of a lot for title of rare).... anyhow .... they have that unique look ..... engine is cast aluminum...cast wheels , one motor , hand reverse , cast iron globs for weight , ...6 pick ups !!!!!!!!! ( ok mine is missing a set on one of the pilot trucks so only 4!) ..... it is touchy ...reverse unit seems to work sometimes ..mostly not ... seems to happily develop internal shorts at will .... sounds like a cement mixer.... no clue if it is suppose run on 60 cycle AC but it does sorta ..did not like DC ...it is huge bigger than 1/4' bigger than 17/64ths ....about the same size as the Bedell electric of the late 30's .... "monster truck" size ... love the star on the front that cold war touch ... does not like 30" radius but that is all I could get my hands on immediately for this rather short video .... searching the WWW the train was offered with 2 sets of passenger and freights cars ...a clever knock off Lionel switch-man shed ...and a catalog / instruction book ? ..it's in Russian so no idea what it is saying ......hopefully someone out there knows more about these trains and is willing to share to enlighten us all ..please .
Cheers Carey
and these folks beat us into space ???..
