Another eBay Ass....

Ok, so I'm bidding on this Blue 390E and the guy says it's a Lionel Classic. He has the box and the condition looks nice. I figured I missed one of these in the last Ralston Auction and I'd love to have a 390E in Comet Colors....

Since I've about had my fill of being shafted on eBay, I decided to take a second look at the pics after I bid. There on the bottom of the tender and engine are refurb stickers. This thing has been painted after the fact. I spoke to a few buddy's of mine and they told me Lionel only cataloged the 390E in black but there were a few folks that repainted them. Whenever a description and the items don't match up, I've always had problems, so I retracted my bid. Here's the note I got from the guy:

"You have to many negatives and to many bid retractions. Please do not bid on my auctions again. You are a disgrace to eBay."

I have three negatives, they were on things that were hotly contested by me. I am a strong believer in the old adage of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". But the above message served absolutely zero purpose and frankly, ticked me off. Here's my response:

"Fascinating message. Don't worry, I won't bid on diddly. By the way, if you are a TCA member or ever think about joining, here is something to consider; your auction says nothing about the loco being repainted or containing repro parts, yet you have refurb stickers on the bottom of the engine.

Upon closer examination, a call to a few expert collectors and Lionel, your loco is a repaint, a fake and is not remotely original. The part # on the side of the box does not match the contents, the part # is a BLACK 390-E engine cataloged in 1990. There is a discrepancy between your engine and the original, which for any collector is a big deal because it takes the worth of your loco from $600 down to about $250. So now who is the disgrace? I cancelled my bid because your description and the reality don't jibe. Don't believe me? Go pick up the phone and call Lionel and ask them how many Blue Comet 390E's were cataloged and built by Mike's Train House. That would be zero. By the way, the buyer (especially another TCA member) will be getting a note from me outlining my findings as well. Thanks for the note."

I dropped a note to the other bidders, not something I would normally do but in this case, being a TCA member and spotting a clear forgery being represented as something else, I felt as though I had a responsibility to mention something, especially with someone that clearly understands very little about collectors and how we work....

Any thoughts? How many of you have had to deal with an eBay ass? I'm done, unless it's something spectacular, I just can't handle eBay any more. One of the things I like about Train Shows and auctions is that once it's done, it's done. No emails and a definite limit on how much nonsense can be transacted.

As a postscript, the seller sent me back a message stating that they were selling trains for someone else and had to take the "other people" that gave them the train to sell on eBay at their word. Funny, I missed that part of the description. You know, the part where you said you don't actually own the item and are just spewing garbage out to up the sale. There are reputable third party sellers on eBay. I have used them for purchases and sales. They always clearly define who they are and what they are doing beforehand.

By the way, the reason I use the above pic is that next time, I am going to look for those 32 points before I hit that bid button...

M

On Transformers....

My ZW is getting a little "cranky". I'm not sure whether it is the track (a possible short) or the juice that I am trying to pull from it. Running a standard and O gauge set simultaneously used to be a breeze for it and now I can definitely see the old ZW getting sluggish.

• How many of you use classic prewar power?
• How many use new power (and not necessarily command & control)?
• Which is the most fun to operate (or are they both fun?
• How safe is standard prewar power?

I have a KW around somewhere and I know I have a Rheostat as well.

Hey, speaking of interesting power: you've all seen that cool layout on the McComas Videos that Fritz Von Tagen has? You know, the Carlisle and Finch layout that is controlled with little light bulbs? I have it on good authority that it is going up for auction in the next few months at New England Toy Train Exchange. My chances of getting it are roughly equal to winning Powerball in New York and New Jersey simultaneously but even if there is a chance to see it, I am definitely going.

At any rate, maybe it's just the ZW and track's way of telling me they are both very tired of being on the floor (it will have been 7 years next month).

Marc

Charging for the site, transformers, etc.

Tom brought up a good point in one of the posts and I thought I should make a quick comment. I do this because I love toy trains, seriously enjoy seeing other people's accomplishments (layouts, scratch building, trains, etc.) and thought all of the internet sites that focused on toy trains were "lacking". In all probability, I will never charge anyone to get access to the site or content.

I will accept advertising. Hold on, don't go nuts. Just finish reading. I will accept advertising from anyone that has anything to do with standard gauge, prewar tinplate, 2 7/8, Buddy L, etc.. It must have something to do with the above because it will interest me and the people that read this BLOG. Here's how it will work: you can email me to get started. I will give you one free year (yes, year) of advertising. You'll get a little spot on the lower right hand side of the blog. You can't have the main area, it's for articles and standard gauge.

You have to get me fresh information (and it can't have anything to do with Postwar stuff or sales on the latest K-Line High Cube boxcars) every month. That's right, ya gotta keep it fresh. It can be sales in your hobby store or on your website, your train show, your trains for sale, your newest tinplate creations, cool tinplate books and video; as long as it has some bearing on the hobby and some interest to the readers of the blog. Like I said, if you think you are going to blitz my readers with the latest PS2 or TMCC Postwar remakes, it won't happen. No guarantees, I absolutely will not guarantee web traffic or any sales because of the advertising.

After July 2006, it's 30 bucks a month. Still extremely reasonable.

I do this because I want to see where and who is selling standard gauge as well as attract them to our site and get them to start addressing us. We are a segment of the market, albeit a small one. Even when you buy beat up engines and cars and refurb them, once you add up the track and all of the other stuff we have to buy (paint, books, lumber, etc.) it adds up really, really fast.

By the way, it is free to contribute to the blog, forever!! Send more pics and stories!


M

Last Brass Monster

Here's the last pic! Very cool toy. I wonder how many of these were made? This definitely does not look scratchbuilt....

More Brass Monster

A great pic of the Brass Monster. This thing is really a cool find, it is something different.

What's really interesting about standard gauge is how many people from the end of official Lionel standard gauge (the 30's) through now have brought out custom stuff. It's one of the things that attracts me to it. All trains lend themselves to being a sort of clay but I think standard gauge is one of the more interesting clay types.
It's large but not overbearing and it maintains a toy like quality. Although there is no way I'd let my kids run this toy around any track. I wonder what this thing looks like when it moves? Heck, this thing must make one racket when it moves around a track!

Marc

Brass Monster

Stephen sent me a pic of something unusual. This is a standard gauge, all brass, very detailed engine. Made in Japan.

Any ideas on who made it? Who done it (whodunnit)? More pics coming up. Stephen wants some cars for it. I'd be curious to see what they would look like.

Drop a note on the board if you know anything!

Marc

Beer Train Movie

Pretty cool, huh? My buddy Matt finally figured out how to get Quicktime movies up on the blog! Thanks Matt!

The Blog has been around a year so, kind of like a layout, it's time to make some changes. The first change you will notice is that you are now viewing the log on my train room floor. Yep, that's my floor as a background. I thought it would be appropriate because that's were most trains started out in the first place. Getting played with on the floor.

The movie above is Quicktime. That means:

1) If you want to view it you have to go to www.quicktime.com and download and install Quicktime 7.

2) You will need a computer that is fairly recent (within the last 4 or 5 years) with a decent amount of ram.

3) You will need a reasonably fast connection.

My bud Matt is going to help me make some changes to the Blog. We were brainstorming today and I think we are going to change the coloring of the blog to match a Lionel catalog from the 30's a litte more closely. Same with the styling.

Now that we know how to put up the movies, quite a few more are on the way. I have to get some server space but that shouldn't be too hard.

Now if I could just get my hands on that Dehanes F3 set....

Marc

PS By the way, the trains in the movie are an MTH 384 with some beer boxcars. At the end is a a Harley Boxcar. The movies will get much clearer, espcially as I fiddle with some of the Apple Movie stuff. The little O Gauge pepper zipping around is a %100 original 259E with a couple of 600 series passenger cars. Who says O gauge is for high railers?

3243 Plus Mike's Box's

Yes, I am a slob. It's largely due to the constantly changing nature of where I store my trains and stuff. I'm not a box-saver, at least of MTH. Those went right from there into the dumpster (the boxes, never the trains).

By the way, don't read too much into the MTH remote, I still like controlling trains with conventional means....

This 3243 runs very, very smooth. Like all engines with front and rear trucks though, it can be very picky about track and frogs on switches. Some engines and sets of cars just aren't as finicky as others. On a scale of 1 to 10 I'd have to say this set is about a 4 (10 being most finicky). I could never figure out why old timers in the TCA were always so irritated with irregular flange sizes on wheels. Now I know.

M

3243 Waiting for clearance again....

It's past crowded in my train room. At what point do I need to go Amish on my house and build an addition?

Wallpaper or no?

Any thoughts on the wallpaper we put up on the site? It's a little homage to Jim Cohen - it's a pair of his steeple cabs and one of his 1764's. I know it's hard to tell but I do think they always look nice and add a little class.

I have quite a few pics I am getting ready to post (including one of my new standard gauge "beer" train). Anyone else have any new standard gauge they picked up this summer? Come on, send me some pictures!

Marc

3243 Face Off!

I'd love to think of what would have been like if Ives had survived... These 3243's are a really nice change from the old 402 and 408E.

Ok, so let me speculate for a few minutes:

Ives would have made a ton of prewar Trains (more than they did), probably in the ideal "Ives" styling that was uniquely Ives. Probably more locomotives.... A really nice New York City Interurban and Trolleys. Perhaps some Steeple Cabs?

Postwar Ives would have been different. Would they have merged with Flyer to create more glorious American Flyer/Ives Postwar Classics? My guess is that they would have focused on a few innovations, probably operating items like working O gauge accessories.

If they were around today, what would they be like? Still producing great toys like Marklin and LGB or reproducing stuff from the great days of Lionel yesteryear? There's a whole bunch of scenarios.

What if they had stuck to their precision clock making train roots? My experience with clock made trains is that they run smooth and the people that built them understood precision. I think it would have been interesting to see them live intact without ridiculous acquisitions (see the Lionel Roy Cohn acquisition or the current Wellspring debacle for futher info).

I always heard Edward Ives wasn't a terribly friendly fellow but the marketing and direction of the company was always focused on quality and fun toys. Toss in some serious precision and quality control and you basically don't have any company that exists today. Somehow I don't see Ives outsourcing their phone support to Bangalore.

Here's something to think about: Philip Morris (now called Altria) has been around since 1847 and Kraft Foods has been around since 1903. Animal Crackers (from National Biscuit) have essentially been the same since 1898. Coke isn't a whole heck of a lot different. The point is, even with some serious acquisitions, a couple of companies have still managed to maintain and grow their brand identities. Some of them substnatially.

Ok, there aint no stoppin progress, I get that. But some of the ideals Ives emobodied we need right now. Corporate greed seems to be the norm these days and a truly innovative product that has amazing quality can be elusive.

Here are some things I would like to see Ives 2006 produce:

1) Signals and lights (street and otherwise) from days long gone.
2) Ives Distant Control - a new Ives stylized Transformer. An integrated Ives system for powering trains, lights and accessories. Modular with prewar styling. Made in America.
3) Ives Locomotives. O Gauge and Wide Gauge. Lots of brass and steel (instead of Iron).
4) Toys from the past - Dorfan, Voltamp and Howard. Ives could make these, preferably in standard gauge or wide gauge. Stations, homes and little buildings. Amazing bridges and spans.

Just a few ideas. Ok, I'm nuts but it is something I think about. I know, tons of people that are out there saying I am insane, just spend $20k at an auction on original stuff. Still, the current attempts at Ives are a darn good start and I like 'em (MEW, MTH, etc.).

I just put together a Lego "Wolverine" for one of my kids. All plastic and two of the parts incorrectly formed. My kid's whole room is full of video games that my son has scratched and they barely work. I know at least a dozen parents that have spent over a thousand bucks on video games and the systems that go along with them. I have two video game systems and cartridges sitting in storage.

Am I really nuts?

Sepia and Ives

Just goofing around with Photoshop and a bottleneck on my pike! The trains are backed up to New Jersey (the Ives engines get really cranky, I think they only like New England). Some better pics are on the way!

Ives Wannamaker

Some cranky passengers on an Ives Wannamaker Set are waiting for clearance. They like the paint on their car but they are not happy that it's taking so long to get to the station!

Paint Color

Stephen sent me this great link to do paint matching. I'd have to say the my MEW 3245R is a closer match to Kadet Blue than the MTH version. Click on the link above to see the palette. It may not be spot on because not all computer screens render colors the same way but it should be pretty close (or at least give you a decent idea).

I am fried from the 4th of July! I got a serious sun burn!

M

Blue 3245R from MTH

Ok, so I compared this to the green MTH 3245R and it definitely is not green. The green on the 3245R from MTH is almost spot on the original.

One thing MTH did that I really liked: they included Ives and Lionel Compatible couplers with this engine. It also runs really, really smooth, even on horrible track like mine.

So could this be Kadet Blue? I have to pour through my library to see if I can get a color match going for the 3245R. I was hoping someone that has one of these could let me know beforehand.

By the way, I apologize for the goofy spacing at the top of the site. I need to fix some of the HTML. Please tolerate the mess for just a little while. I have a ton of good stuff coming. I have found vast amounts of what I would lovingly call "lost standard gauge information" in old TCA Quarterlys. I have spent a couple of bucks and grabbed all of the quarterlys from the 50's, 70's and 80's with one year of the 70's still eluding me and most of the 60's still eluding me. They won't get away for long though. These things, have a ton of info that has been more or less lost to antiquity. I am trying to figure out how to get these all put into PDF format and stored in an online vault for us to use.

M

Blue 3245R

This is blue but it isn't Kadet Blue. I wonder where that nomenclature came from? Kadet as in West Point Kadet?

M

Ives 3245R

Ok, so I finally picked up an MTH Ives 3245R (Left). Being that my summer finances have been diddly, I was glad to get just one.

Here's the thing: the engine on the (Right) is from Model Engineering Works. It is light Blue. The engine on the left is MTH. It is supposed to be "Kadet Blue".

If you look at Kadet Blue in the MTH catalog, it is a pretty dark Blue. This thing is almost Torquoise. It isn't that I don't like the color, I just don't think that this is Kadet Blue.

Can anyone help me out?

M

Thought I would liven things up a bit with a nice President's Special chugging by the old Power Station! 

Ya gotta read this...

Ward Kimball put out a book about Walt Disney and it is one of the most interesting reads around. Check out the link.

It really does say something about the spirit of entrepenuers and inventors at the time of Disney. I wonder if we haven't lost some of the kind of whackiness this guy had...

A quick quote:

He once said to me, "I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I've ever known."

I think we need more imagination and passion, it's part of why we play with trains!

Marc

Posts are coming....

Have no fear, I have been working my rear off this summer and I haven't had a second to post diddly. I did have some time to do some research so I have some interesting stuff to post on some manufacturers that we have discussed a little.

Dick Mayer (who is producing his last round of tinplate right now), Jerry Brown and John A Daniels come to mind. So does Voltamp and a few others we all love.

Some of my offline time has been looking at how to put more media into the blog. I have plenty of great Quicktime movies of trains as well as PDF's of some original TCA articles.

In doing some of my research through old TCA Quarterly's, I have definitely seen a trend, not through months or years but through decades. Going back to the 70's and 80's, there was still a predominant amount of die hard tinplate discussion in the Q and the Postwar nostalgia, while somewhat prevalent, was not the entire discussion. It seems that as the market turned into the Postwar wind, so did much of the focus of many fellow collectors.

Re-living your childhood isn't a bad thing but when I was a kid, I was exposed to literally every kind of train you can imagine. I just happen to like prewar trains the best.

After pouring over about 25 years of Q's and a decent amount of vendor literature, the direction is still predominantly postwar Lionel. No suprise there, especially based on the demographic the companies are catering to. I wonder though, especially with the economy constantly shifting, who is going to buy all these $700 plus GG1's? I know TCA membership is up but I still have to wonder how many folks are just happy with a few trains and a little oval of track?

How much computer stuff do we actually need to stuff into a train? Being that silicon is mostly sand, when will prewar (Prewar Iraq that is) toy trains wear out? I hate sounding cynical but I don't want to see toy trains completely fall into the conundrum of the commodity world (like computers). I put on my Star Trek McCoy (Bones) hat: "Dammit Jim, these are toys, not computers!", "I see no reason why a healthy toy shouldn't last for at least as long as a Vulcan". Ok, I am back from the Star Trek Convention.

I guess after eyeballing all this material for some articles I am going to write (and hopefully republish PDF's for you to look at the original content), I wonder if and who will rediscover the Carlisle and Finch, Voltamp's or Dick Mayer creations?

One that caught my specific interest was the a neat story (which shall get posted shortly) on how the Toonerville Standard Gauge trolley came to be in the 80's.

Stay tuned!

Marc