Buy/Make Anything Cool Lately (Tinplate Version)

PD: What a great castle and tunnel for the layout. Thanks for your construction notes as well. Not sure I would ever attempt such a project but it’s fun to know how it was done. Hey what about that engine exiting the tunnel. My guess was either the Lionel “Harry Poter” engine or a Hornsby LMS tank.

Thanks for posting

Don

@Mark S. posted:

This nice Marx Commodore Vanderbilt locomotive followed me home from the local train shop today. It runs great, of course.

Even if it didn't run it would be an attractive art deco display piece

Mark,

I love that short video of your layout and the Marx run-by, plus the track ballasting. Do you have any more photos of your layout you can post? I am always looking for inspiration!

Thanks!

John

Thanks Don...fun project.

The loco is a prewar Marklin 970.

PD

Here is my latest acquisition the large 0/1 Gauge Kibri 48-20 signal bridge. What a monster -- 44 cm long. Fortunately I still had a bit of room on my layout.  But I think it's the end for any further large structures.  Enjoy the photos.  Lew Schneider

@John Smatlak posted:

Russian-made "Moskobel" O gauge diesel locomotive of the 1950's. Quite an interesting piece, and a real brute, weighing in at 6 pounds, 2 oz. Luckily there is a good amount of info on the internet about these, starting with the TCA page:  http://www.tcawestern.org/moskobel.htm (note also the links down at the bottom of that page). After a clean and lube, it runs, although some additional tweaking is needed to get all the wheels to sit squarely on the track (the way the couplers protrude through their slots is giving the idler trucks a bit of "lift" that they don't need), and to take out a little bit of a lean to one side. A short video clip is included, enjoy!

And is that a Ralstoy Allied semi in the last picture?

@Forty Rod posted:

And is that a Ralstoy Allied semi in the last picture?

That is a Grimland  (crazy name for a toy company eh?) Allied van, with the incorrect tractor. Great colors!

Thanks, PD, for the additional info and photos. I had sort of forgotten about paper mache as well. It was used for a lot of tunnels, pre-plastic, and is easy to do and would look right at home on a tinplate layout. Great job!

Thanks, Will, it was a lot of fun while cooped up in the house. I was thinking that the base, with a few modifications, could make a great stand for a small (four-foot or less) artificial Christmas tree.

PD

Ralstoy came out of Nebraska and had a lot of really nice metal tractor-trailer rigs (and possibly tractor and trailers sold separately) for awhile.  Their later stuff looks like painted wood block, nbut is still usable way back.  I'm always on the look out for the early rigs, but will take what I can find.

This is the first I have heard of Ralstoy.  Are the trucks and cars pretty close to O gauge?  Where can I find more information?

Northwoods Flyer

@Greg J. Turinetti I also hadn't heard of them, so I did a search on Ebay and found a lot. Like Forty Rod said, mostly trucks and in the 1950s or 60s.  Details and windows printed on.  Those are pretty reasonable. Seem like they would work with O scale. The few early pieces were pricy.

@Greg J. Turinetti posted:

This is the first I have heard of Ralstoy.  Are the trucks and cars pretty close to O gauge?  Where can I find more information?

Northwoods Flyer

I'm guessing that they are bit small for O gauge, more like S.  The details aren't much to shout about, but they are great for back on the layout a ways or if ....like me.....you are running O-27 Marx toy trains, they will work.  I'm not above running very detailed stuff alongside  something that has a shape sort of like the real thing, and I really like Marx lithograpy and some other painted on details.

I received my restored display and conversation AF piece. It looks great and smells like fresh paint. Ha. I’m prewar focused right now. Mostly unrestored. I have no permanent layout and this is a temporary layout to play with all of this crazy in the interim. Lionel JLC GG1 and a PRSL passenger car in the background.

Wow, that is nice!

PD

I’m pretty excited about a (hopefully) nice prewar Std Lionel No. 8e with the original box in olive green. I purchased it over the weekend. It might arrive before the weekend. Or not. Shipping lately has been problematic. I’ll share some photos when it arrives.

Why wait. Here is what I hope arrives. Fingers crossed!

Wow!  "Comrade Smatlak" what a great toy loco from the Soviet era.  As the "wall began to come down and relationships with the US began to warm, I was privileged to be part of an "official delegation" to the USSR.  We rode from Leningrad to Moscow on a train pulled by an engine very similar to yours (only green with red trim).  Unfortunately for a railfan, railroads were considered "defense systems" and photographs were not allowed.

I was going over some of the items in my collection and I found this guy siting on my shelf, looking rather lonely.  So just for fun I got him out and took some pictures.  Don't be fooled by his red color, although the 114 in his same year did come in red, he was originally orange as is shown on the underside....some young man in the day wanted a red car and Dad or Grandad accommodated that with (old fashioned heavy enamel) paint.  Anyway here he is, just for fun.

Unfortunately the couplers are missing and so is the brakewheel. However,  the trucks are original, are properly (iaw Greenbergs nomenclature) 100 Series Type 5 trucks and he has both his sliding doors.  This car was made between 1915 and 1917.

The neatest thing about this fellow is his underside.  First it shows that the original color of the car was orange ( which is OK as car came in orange from the factory in same years), but the next part is the neat historical part.  The bottom is embossed and (again IAW Greenbergs text on Standard Gauge) Lionel abandoned embossing about 1916.  More importantly it is embossed " Lionel Manufacturing Company" which is a pretty solid dating characteristic.  According to Ron Hollander in "All Aboard", Lionel Mfg Co became the Lionel Corporation on 22 July 1918.  So this clearly sets this fellow at being made sometime from 1915 -1916.

What made this fellow so special to me was that he was a "host" gift to me from a friend of mine from NASA who came to our house for dinner in the 90's.  So here is a toy train, from the earliest days of aviation (both Wright bros were still alive and active in 1917) given to me by an engineer then working on human space travel.  COOL!

Best wishes

Don

A few Mccoy items received Sunday. A Diner, and a TCA TROLLEY. Love them both

Joe Gozzo

New to the stable. MTH Ives 3243R.

Steve

Don, I've always been partial to the Moskabel station