The Magic of Youtube....

Arno Baars has put up some very unusual and rare items on Youtube and I would highly, highly recommend seeing these very rare items in action.

First up, a Delker Helix. I don't want to go into the history of this product, it's existence is well known among the collectors of standard gauge esoterica. Outside circles of collectors may not have seen one. This is something to aspire to.




Next up is a General Train Streamliner, a Voltamp Interurban (Pridelines) and a Restored Voltmamp #220. Very cool stuff.



Last but not least are some great shots of the General Train Streamliner. Again this is one of those rare standard gauge items not many folks know about. It's why we need to encourage manufacturers to do some out of box thinking. Nope, it isn't a 400e or 202 Trolley however it is really unique. Just the sound alone on that two rail track has a pitch and sound that can't be replicated. PS I would recommend switching to HQ quality for this video.


Marc

PS Check this quick little vid of a C&F 42 running on an elevated track.

C&F From Benjamin

Benjamin just posted a great Youtube video of his C&F Trolley making the paces. He is also working on a steam driven power generator to really run his trains! Check out the video plus others....

Marc




And from aprocheck:





And a Toonerville for good measure:

Ben's C&F

Ben sent me some pics of the C&F Repro Trolley he built along with some shots of real C&F at a train museum (Cincinnati Train Museum Holiday Display). Either way, C&F needs to make a comeback. These trains are classics!
Marc

Running 2" Gauge For The First Time

There is only a difference of 1/8 of an inch between Standard gauge and two-inch gauge, but there is a world of difference conceptually. I’m a new convert to 2” gauge, but these great electric toy trains have a certain special antique nostalgia and they exude tons of charm with their relatively simple (some say primitive) construction and subdued colors. Two-inch gauge, two-rail electric trains, manufactured by Knapp, Howard, Voltamp, and Carlisle & Finch, dominated the electric trains market during the 15-year period preceding World War I. Only one manufacturer, Lionel, was making Standard gauge electric trains during those years. Two-inch gauge trains are scarce and can be expensive but they can be found from time to time at prices comparable to mid-priced Standard gauge locomotives and sets. You will need 2”, 2-rail track and a decent DC power source to run them, but they are a bucket of fun to learn about, collect, and operate.

Jim

Running Under The Tree?

I don't have our holiday tree up just yet, but here is the set that I'd like to run around it this year. The problem is that I need some 2" gauge track. I'll probably roll my own using some standard gauge tinplate track, but I haven't started the project yet.

What are you planning to run under your tree this year?

Jim

How does this thing even run?

Here is a motor to a 1903 Carlisle and Finch interurban. It is factory original, but it looks more like something that was built out of one of those "50 more projects you'll never get around to" handbooks for boys. The main frame element is a wood block to insulate the two sides (this is 2-rail, after all). The axle is electrically isolated using fiberboard tubes to support the ends of brass stub axles. The reserve unit consists of little more than some brass wipers nailed into a small piece of wood touching a drum contactor. I mean, honestly. Could you imagine Lionel doing something this cheezy? Or Ives? The reverse is built into a motorman's controller just like Lionel 2 7/8" gauge cars. Ok, I'll admit that is a nice touch.

By all rights this shouldn't work, or work very well, or certainly not work for 104 years. I have seen cases where the axle ends wear into the frames, causing excessive friction and truck misalignment to the point where the mechanism freezes. My friend's interurban is like that and runs fine upside down but not when placed on a track. My axle bearing wear isn't so bad but would only run upside down as well. Then a miracle very slowly occurred. Ever few months I would give it a go, and it would sorta grumble a bit and occasionally move a few inches. Then one day it slowly moved a whole 3 feet until it hit a curve. Then a few months later I tried again and it worked its way around the whole layout. Well in point of fact it didn't because I had too many obstructions for something this big, but when it proved it could run I moved some elevated posts and cleared a path. And it kept running better. The best part is it actually sounds like a real old streetcar (if you haven't been to a streetcar museum, go! Now!). I still don't know what its problem was and why it doesn't have one now, and I am not about to start poking and prodding around to figure it out. If you want to see how it runs check it out on youtube at the link provided, all 18 second of it.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=maGjm3S0iLI

Track - how not to do it

In Greenberg's book on Carlisle and Finch, Graham Claytor wrote that one of the main reasons they failed as a train company was because they never developed sufficient track for the masses. I have written in previous blogs about the craptacular nature of their track. You choice was either strip rails set into individual ties, or prefab stuff made out of wood wood ties with rails nailed in with carpet tacks. The former was only for permanent set ups and was a painful thing to put together, the latter was fragile, flimsey and frequently got out of gauge. This was a far cry from Lionel's 120 lb track that would withstand a car running over it and could be set up in minutes.

But if that wasn't bad enough, try this:

This is Beggs live steam track. Each curve is composed of three wood blocks with rails embedded into slots cut into the blocks by some unknown and magical process. Rail connections are simply made with overhanging rail on one end fitting into the slots into the next piece where the rail comes up short. Since Beggs engines were live steam, there was no need for electrical conductivity. Sounds kinda limited? well, there's more (or less, depending upon your point of view): Beggs designed it so that 7 sections made a circle. How are you supposed to make an oval when 7 sections make a circle? You aren't because most Beggs engines were made with the pilot wheels fixed to run in a predetermined radius. The engines couldn't go straight. The cars even had different diameter wheels, larger on one side than the other, to give them less rolling resistance going around the circle. The more delux Beggs engines did in fact have real pivoting pilots and were made run on ovals, however Beggs straight track is very rare and most went in circles. You would think this was very limiting and would result in a quick fold-up of the company, but in fact Beggs and its sucessor McNair produced trains from about 1875-1910; a good long run. I guess in the late 1800's getting a live steam toy to run around in circles was probably the highlight of your week....Here's what a complete set looked like:

Seeing old things new again

Sometimes when you move you old stuff around into a different context, something new pops out. Like staring at one of those pictures of two silhouette profiles facing each other and then seeing it resolve into a vase. Usually I run my Finch 20 with freight cars, and my Lionel repainted day coaches with a Lionel #6 or Finch 34. Instead I happened to put them on the elevated line to clear the lower tracks for another train. Then I noticed something:





The #20 with day coaches looked really familiar. In fact, it looked an aweful lot like an early New York Elevated Railway train, which were run with Forney 0-4-2's before the cars were converted to electric operation.

(from http://www.ironhorse129.com/rollingstock/CandS/dsp-passenger/nyelrail1.htm).

The 20 isn't a Forney, and its too big for the cars, but for a toy it could pass for an elevated train. The earlier Finch 20 would work better because it didn't have cowcatchers. I don't think you find many cows on elevated rights of way. Now I am all hot and bothered to get 3 crappy day coaches to turn into elevated railway cars. From the looks of things, I just need to add some extra railing detail, fool with the windows a bit, lose the steps, move the trucks out, and add marker lights. I'd prefer to work with repros, but what are you going to do?
-Alex

Old Josh must be turning

In the first 2 decades of the 20th century Josh Cowan worked his butt off to put his 2" gauge competitors out of business. Within the first decade he pretty much killed off Howard and Knapp, and in the second he finished the job on Carlisle and Finch and sent Voltamp running into the arms of Boucher, only to have them convert to standard gauge soon after. So this must have been a real slap in the face....

Around 1910 or so a young model railroader named George Hopkins had a single Carlisle and Finch #34 and some gondola cars to call a railroad. He also had a friend who brought his train over, and then left it there. Accounts vary whether he abandoned them or told George just to hold onto them for him. Either way, pretty soon possession became 9/10ths and George decided he needed to do something with them. The train was an early Lionel thin rim #6, most likely split frame based on the solid 3 rivet tender trucks, with 1st series freight cars. What George did was convert them to run on 2" 2-rail track, exactly the opposite of what Josh had been marketing all that time.

Fast forward to 2004 and the estate of George's son, Dick, was being split up and the converted #6 was in play. This wasn't some deep dark newly found wonder - George and Dick had been running the #6 on George's Trans Attic and United Railway for the better part of 60 years, and both were well known in the 2" gauge train community. [I am currently working on a track plan of the TA&U and will post it when I am done. It was an amazing piece of work.] I was fortunate enough to acquire the #6, and in fact I seem to be the only one who had any real interest in it - even the guy selling the collection thought its value was pretty much only in the wheels.

But I love it. It’s not clear to me when George converted it; in interviews he suggests it was around 1910 which would have made him about 15. Parts of the conversion are crude enough that it could have been done by a teenager, albeit and darn talented one, but the courage to do something so crazy and the fact that mechanically it works so well suggests maybe he was a little older.

Regardless, an extensive amount of work was done to convert it. The entire frame was discarded and replaced with a long wood block. Parts of the side frames were kept for bearings. The motor was remounted on top of the wood block. The reverse unit was left intact. He may have originally used it but now it is not connected. A rectifier has been installed. George ran his layout on DC and the rectifier allowed him to remotely reverse the engine by switching track polarity. The wheels were insulated by cutting the axles short and inserting the stubs into a wood dowel with a hole drilled surprisingly accuratly down the center. The drive axles needed to be positively locked onto the wood dowels for torque, and he accomplished this by drilling holes though the wood dowels and axle stubs and inserting nails, essentially acting like cotter pins.





The engine was repainted black, some piping and air pump detail added, and for some reason a non-working headlight installed. However the headlight looks great.

When I got it, it required a little work. The wood dowels insulating the drive wheels were getting very dry and in fact one cracked in half. I wired it back together and used some epoxy to hold the nails in. The pony truck was simply screwed into the frame, with very limited range of movement. This worked fine for George's large 10' radius layout, but not for mine. I made a swing arm for it patterned after a real Lionel #6. It came with its original, though repainted, tender (unfortunately the solid sided 3 rivet trucks couldn't be found, so I got it with the later open sided 3 rivet trucks). I needed that tender for an original #6, so I made a slope back tender for it which was basically a combination of Lionel's prototype #6 slope back tender (TCAQ, Oct 2006, vol 52, #4)and the #5 tender. George never lettered it. Since the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie is one of my favorite railroads, I made up some rubber stamps using fonts as close as I could find to the ones used for the Lionel prototype slope back tender (also lettered for P&LE).


It runs smooth as a champ. I repainted and re-gauged a couple Lionel Day coaches to go with it and the whole thing sails around the layout. In all, I have less money in the entire train than the going rate for a single excellent condition 200 series freight car.

Maurer Treasures!

Well, it's shaping up to be family reunion day at Maurer's in April. This two-day auction is probably the most interesting and significant auction this year. I haven't looked at all of the pictures yet, but I don't agree that the early lots are mostly beat up or restored. Maybe it's just a difference in perception, or in what factors appeal to the individual collector, but I did see some wonderful Voltamp pieces, some interesting C&F, three great Boucher locomotives, and lots of other stuff that interests me. Of course, my approach to the older and rarer tinplate is from an historical perspective. For me that means that condition is secondary to historical importance and scarcity. For example, the Lionel/Converse trolley pictured is fascinating to me. These rare 2-7/8" gauge pieces were only made between 1901 and 1905. I have an article about the L/C trolleys set to be published soon in Tinplate Times, in which I argue that it is possible to date these trolleys precisely to one of four years/periods: 1901; 1902; 1903; and 1904-5. This trolley looks to me like a 1903 vintage piece. Wouldn't I love to add it to my collection!

Jim

Almost 30 years ago....

More Graham Claytor Pics...

Graham Claytor's Collection

About 30 years ago Ward Kimball did a brief story for TTOS on Graham Claytor. It was kind of strange because I remember hearing his name from when I was a kid.

I guarantee I would have remembered him (because I was playing with trains at the time this article was published) if I had known he collected old trains like Voltamp, Carlisle and Finch, Knapp and Howard.

Let me apologize up front for the quality of the pictures. While high quality film and photography was around in the 1970's, cheap 4 color printing really wasn't cheap. Ergo, these were the best my HP Scanner and my touch up skills could muster.

Graham Claytor was kind of an unusual guy. Both Graham and his wife had made the most out of their lives; both were career US Navy people and were hero's in their own right. They also loved trains. There's a story about them getting up at 4 am to follow the Washington Trolley snow plows while they cleared the right of way for the day's traffic (it's a true story by the way).

You can find out more via Wikipedia about W. Graham Claytor here. Most of the TTOS article is Ward discussing how amazed he was that a secretary of the navy and his wife could collect trains. Graham was secretary of the navy under Jimmy Carter. The truth is that his travels gave him access to collectors and toys others could only dream about. And at that point in history (50's, 60's and 70's) Carlisle and Finch, Knapp, Howard and so on weren't hot collectibles. Everyone was still looking for that favorite 400E or 1010 Interurban.

This guy had one amazing collection. I'll post some additional pics later. When I see these pics, I marvel at how many great items are made prior to World War I and World War II that don't have the Lionel "L" on them. When I was first flicking through the old magazines I had a slight sense of deja vu; predominantly because of the recent Pride Lines Voltamp production.

His wife collected Victorian Doll Houses. Honestly, I was amazed that his wife let him display his trains all over the house. I catch huge flack when one of my trains finds its' way anywhere outside of my little sandbox.

By the way, as a side note, long after this article was published Graham Claytor was the key guy that brought Amtrak out of the red and into the black. He retired from Amtrak in 1993 and passed away in 1994. This is one secretary of the navy I wish I had known!

M