Toonerville Trolley

Very cool stuff.

  I've never seen the reels and only read a few strips really. But the trolley itself was etched into my think-melon somewhere along the line. Likely an old toy I played with once.

...I see wanting to tell someone to pull up thier britches up on a passenger run is actually old hat. I thought that was strictly the styling of new age idjits and wanna be thugs who don't have a clue what it meant to real thugs who had done prison time  

   You are the prewar expert, with the piece in hand; but I think the paint job might be two kinds of paints. With the application separated, maybe by years, the thin bottom a laquer or ink, nicely adhered. The top an oil based enamel that shrunk over time; thick from a poor spray and paint type both.

  Brush strokes would be likely if done early as spraying paint just wasn't nearly as common, especially for home/hobby use. I can't really see any strokes, and the brown looks pretty smooth.  There are surfacing addatives for paint that will smooth strokes, but you can usually still see them up close.

Always wanted one but can not afford the going rates, so I'm planning to make a scratch brass Toonerville Trolley body and to mount it on a Lionel hand car (just got the hand car).
This is a future project, just acquiring parts.

Now the fun would be to mount the body to the hand car frame pivoting in the center so that the up and down motion of the hand car would rock the body. There will be some experimenting so that the rocking motion would not be to severe and to cause trolley to jump off track.

Has anyone else attempted this?

No to the attempt, but not thoughts.

Gearing would be "traditional". 

  But I think I'd look to a second toy can motor& gearbox to do the body movement. A cam or disk crank & rod to rock it. A rock-speed adjustment pot. here would be easy. A second motor could also keep the trolley speed steadier than the rocking's load fluxuations may allow.

If more electronics are used; an RC servo motor seems simple, strong, reliable, and promising on varying the speed of the rocking too. 

A second motor could also allow the rocking to be shut off if preferred.

not O scale, a large scale

Toonerville Trolly.

https://youtu.be/Xuywgm6GhhY

That Toonerville Trolley sure is unique. Seeing the way GRJ likes to mod and create unusual items such as his Weinermobile, I wouldn't be surprised if after his new layout is well underway that he doesn't attempt to make a Toonerville Trolley. I wonder if a toy Toonerville Trolley has ever been made in a size close to O gauge so that its body could be adapted to fit an appropriately appearing motorized O gauge chasis? 

I saw one(not O gauge) in an antique store but way too pricey. I have a tin station and some day plan to make a trolley. Have the Lionel track car for power.

I have the O gauge C&M version. The same unit was also sold with Std Gauge wheel spacing.

Steve

There was a King version that sold recently on the Bay in pieces. 

Lyle Cain offered a Toonerville trolley in the 80's ... one of the windups from the 20's 30's could be modified into a motorized version ... ...   Kemtron offered one in HO ...there are a bunch of assorted Toonervilles out there ...I liked this one because it was one of a kind ..., ...I would not send in to Lyle for a trolley ..this was from 1987 ... a mere 41 years ago.... cheers Carey 

Dick Mayer of RichArt fame, sold several Toonerville Trolley items including: Standard Gauge, O gauge and HO gauge trolleys.  The Standard and O gauge trolleys are identical except for the wheel spacing.  When I visited Dick's shop, one of his tables was covered with unfinished HO Toonerville Trolleys.  Wish I had taken a picture of that!

In addition, Dick slightly modified the cardboard Coca Cola (above) and Vaseline (below) cutouts for kids, originally produced in the '30s-'40s,  then printed the modified cutout sheets onto plastic, cut them out, and sold them for use as a background town for his tinplate Toonerville station.  The late Butch Alvarado, Dick's assistant, cut up one of these sheets for me as I watched, then presented me with the cutouts (bottom picture) and an uncut sheet.  Neat!

In addition, Dick made several accessories for the Trolley including an operating Aunt Eppe car (below), which was pulled by the Trolley and bounced Aunt Eppe up and down due to a cog on the cars front axle. 

My favorite of Dick's accessories is his set of miniature turntables (above), which when placed at the opposite ends of a section of O Gauge track allow the Trolley to run back and forth endlessly.  Dick told me that he made a prototype set of Standard Gauge turntables but unfortunately he never got them to operate flawlessly so he never went into production with them.   That said, in operation the O gauge set is fun to watch!

Checkout SGMA at Trainfest 2017 video where Toonerville shows up at the end of the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9yi2DnHmt0

Bob Nelson

My Tunnerville Trolley, Station and Figures were part of a display at MUZEO in 2016.

Steve