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Hey Guys,

These pre-War German tinplate locos are for some reason the only tinplate locos that interest me.  If anyone has any short clips of them running on the tracks, it would be great to see them.

I wonder how many of them in the U.S. were already here before the War, vs. how many survived the devastation of Germany and came in afterwards?  Were they commonly sold in department stores in the U.S. before the War?

Thx,

Mannyrock

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Hi Manny ... a lot of the German manufacturers exported to the States both before and after the war , Bing for example produced many models specifically for the US market and along with manufacturers like Dorfan set up US based business's to market their trains ( Fandor being the US side of Kraus/Dorfan) Hornby even had a crack at the US market but was brought down by the Great Depression and they closed their plant in the States after only a few short years 1927-30

Postwar contributions were often low cost sets destined for the chain store market , which Japan and Asia soon took over with cheap and cheerful at much lower costs

After the war ( WWII) many European sets were sent stateside from factories engaged in reparation and rebuilding the industry , but sadly the O Gauge market was not to be so long lived in Europe and the rest of the world , the war and technology was killing them off as the world in general turned on to more HO based home sets .

I would think by far the greatest numbers of quality german/european sets landed in America in the "between wars" period 1920-1940  and with mainly lesser tier factories like Bub/Beckh/Distler after the war ...

No doubt there were trickles and imports at all other sides of the above timelines , because lets face it USA = Expendible Income , you had money and werent afraid to spend it lol !

If you have a few days or weeks you want to spend on youtube then you would maybe pay Fred's Youtube channel a visit

https://www.youtube.com/user/sncf231e/videos

Just the clockworks

https://www.youtube.com/user/s...arch?query=clockwork

and just one of many  to whet your whistle

Last edited by Fatman

LOL Not me @Tinplate Art ! Fred did all the work! Hes the awesome one here!

Manny a lot of what you are asking as to suitability for running will depend very much on flange depth of different locos , most were built to run on a standard "Highish" elevated folded tube track and dont have much in the way of Fine Scale wheels .. I cant comment on Lionel as I run my stuff of tracks as old as the trains themselves

Pics below to give you an idea of height etc ...

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OGR Publishing, Inc., 1310 Eastside Centre Ct, Suite 6, Mountain Home, AR 72653
800-980-OGRR (6477)
www.ogaugerr.com

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