Ives in Mike's Collection

I think if Mike V had been around during the days of Ives, they may not have gone bankrupt! Heck, they might still be there! Is that that a sunset on Mike's shelf? I haven't seen that much orange in any collection!

Mike can you at least do a Youtube or invite me over so I can do a Youtube of a couple of these running? Just gorgeous Mike, what a fantastic collection! Forgetting about the rest of your collection, these alone would be enough for me!

Marc

Day 5 on the Layout

I think I skipped Day 4. The Prosperity Special is one of the most unusual trains from any era. My layout will be getting a Monorail shortly.

Marc

Ives Shots

Bruce sent me some nice shots of his Ives 1134 cruising around his layout. Just sharing on a very cold Wednesday!
Marc

Copper Train Station Shed

Besides depressing the heck out of me with the S-1 (see previous post) Dave also sent me some pics of his scratch built train shed. These helped me perk up a bit. Dave is a great scratch builder and these shots prove it. This is some die-hard standard gauging....

The Train shed is based on a New York Central Elevated. Dave is going to "deck" it with real oak wood strips and put it next to an old Ives 116 Station. I'd say the effort was definitely worth it. Check out the pics.

Marc

PS Dave, I don't know which bridge that is in the background but could you send us some shots of that as well? That is really something as well!

If Only....

If only the price were close to this now.... Let's face it, we haven't gone in the right direction with price vs. value. I know the whole story about $16 buying so much more 80 years ago than it does now. I don't really care. It was a good value than and it would be a great value now (because of the quality of manufacturing than and the quality now). I know, oversimplifying economics of two different eras, blah blah blah. I don't see much these days I'd readily like to snap up like these trains! Heck, a tank of crummy gas is $70. Even dollars adjusted for yesteryear my yearly gas bill is a whole lot more than $16 ....

Marc

MTH Ives 3236

Not an official review, just some excitement at cracking open a new Ives loco. I read with some interest some fairly harsh criticism of MTH's Chinese manufacturing on the O Gauge Tinplate forums the other day.

If you look at the gearing for this engine (I tried to take some shots of the inner workings) it is really, really clean. When I pulled off the plate I had a huge amount of train grease on my hand as well as my table. I was very impressed by the application and usage of the train grease alone.

Overall, this is a very nice little engine. The paint application is terrific and consistent with prewar Ives paint. The engine itself came with an additional (and different) coupler set, flags and some traction tires. I was missing one set of flags in the box (easily purchased at a train show) however the packing was typical MTH overpacking.

The current Tinplate Catalog has been delayed because MTH wants to catch up with production. I hope the next generation of tinplate they introduce is as interesting as the little engine below.

Marc

More Station Goodness....

Here's a page out of the world of Ives, Flyer and Lionel. Yep, they all look familiar and they are variations on a theme.

Marc

PS I confess. I am a station nut. I probably have somewhere between 12 and 20 stations. More than could ever fit on my budding layout. Champagne wishes and caviar dreams. I'll still settle for a free dinner at Red Lobster....

More Stations 2....

Joe sent more great pics of stations. He made a great point: someone could actually just collect stations and collect trains as a secondary distraction.... Like fine red wine (boisterous yet dry), stations are their own collectible (expensive yet large and colorful). Regardless, even collecting Lionel variations could be pretty damn interesting. -Marc

Lou Hertz On Ives

"One thing is absolutely certain. Every collector, regardless of his original interests or intentions, sooner or later is going to have to face the matter of Ives trains, for Ives unquestionably dominates almost the entire landscape of such old model collecting like a gigantic mountain, or, as some new fans who have not yet fallen under the spell (as they almost invariably sooner or later do), may insist, like a gigantic cloud." - Louis H. Hertz, Collecting Model Trains, 1956, p. 49.

This well-worn old trooper of an Ives #195 caboose was an earlier example in my collection that I have since replaced with a caboose in better condition. However, there's something strangely charming and nostalgic about these old soldiers that have seen better days.

Anyway, there are some blockbuster auctions coming up at Bertoia and Noel Barrett, and York is just a few short weeks away, so there is plenty of excitement in standard gauge tinplate. I can hardly keep up with it all.

Jim

A Mighty Big Auction

One mighty big auction is coming up from NETTE. There are some bargains to be had, especially in the Friday portion of the auction. I will definitely be there for the standard gauge portion.

This Ives set on the left caught my eye. There is also that wonderful 10 Interurban.

MTH please make the 10 and 1010 Interurban set. This is low hanging fruit! It won't take much to build this and you can re-use the tooling for passenger cars. It's one of my favorite pieces of standard gauge and is literally impossible to find in good shape.

Anyway, I got my rant out for today. Check out this auction. I keep driving by my neighbors homes and they all have trees. It still feels really early for a tree but I guess it isn't. Anyone have a couple of decent under tree train shots yet?

Marc

More Stout Goodies

Here are five of the six different Dorfan standard gauge freight cars here offered as a single lot in the Nov. 30-Dec. 1 Stout auction. The lithography used on these Dorfan cars is just beautiful. They are really spectacular. Another interesting lot consists of an IVES 1134 green "President Washington" loco and tender. That piece doesn't come up that often.

Jim

Sets and Engines

SCAN0014, originally uploaded by mrkuffler.

I'm trying to warm up to this format but it is just too cluttered. I am used to strong presentations in graphic arts and layouts. I wish MTH had broken this up a bit more cleanly.

Still, it's a ton of nice tinplate. I'm hoping that delivery will be sped up by fewer new product intros.

M

An IVES Standard Gauge Rarity!

Congratulations to the winning bidder who won this gem on EBAY. I'm not an IVES expert and I'll have to consult my reference books, but I believe this is an extremely rare black painted late 1926 or early 1927 casting lettered "1132." This cast iron casting is usually found in green paint and lettered "1134" and "President Washington" and was a one year only item for 1927. In 1928 IVES introduced a new zinc casting for the 1134 series of locomotives. Maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong or shed more light on this interesting piece. Oh yes, it closed at $5.4K.

Here's an update from Randy Berger as posted to the Standard Gauge list:

The black 1132 with the 4-4-0 wheel arrangement is an uncatalogued loco
from 1928. IVES did not receive the new 1134 loco castings in time to start
shipping sets. They painted several cast-iron 1927 1134 locos (the Pres.
Washington) black and labeled them 1132. They had the die-cast tenders and so
was born a rare variation. They do turn up from time to time and always command
a good deal of money. They do not have the engineer figure in the window.

Jim

More Lou Hertz

From the great Mr. Dave McEntarfer, a couple of nice pictures of Lou Hertz.

The first is The first is from 1959 when SGA was at Bridgeport. They placed a plaque at the old Ives Factory.


The second picture is of Lou Hertz signing his new book 'Messers Ives Of Bridgeport' for his secretary.

It isn't a bad book either, I'd recommend a look for all of you newbies that are interested in Ives. Just because MTH remakes it and you can buy it doesn't mean you know everything about the men, the company or products. Believe me, the whole story and the un-produced or undiscovered products you aren't seeing are just as interesting as the remakes of the great products you can buy. At the very least, save an eBay search for "Hertz" and try to pick up one of his books. They may not be 100% historically accurate but they are interesting nonentheless.

Marc

On the way....

Heard through the grapevine that these little gems are on the way. I'm bugging MTH to find out when the next tin catalog will appear and what will be in it.

More later -
Marc

Here in the Northeast this morning, the station master has piled all the freight inside the station, out of the rain, snow and wind.

I'm a great fan of tinplate lithography and this charming little IVES #200 Freight Station is another great example of prewar tinplate litho. My research indicates that IVES assigned the catalog #200 to two different accessories, this freight station, as well as the massive #200 power house, another heavily lithographed accessory. This would make a good tinplate trains trivia quiz question!

Jim

Snowy day in the Northeast....

Well it's another snowy day here in the Northeast. I love these old Ives engines. Yep, they are part of the Maurer auction...

My kids are thrashing the house and I am still supposed to be working today. Today is definitely a toy train day. I really want to stretch some legs of these new McCoy boxcars. I'm also going to give the 384E Comet a few runs and maybe even break out some trolleys for local passenger service. Yes I know, I'm supposed to be working. I'll run the trains at lunchtime!

I was in Jersey City most of the day yesterday and I noticed some really old buildings that would be entirely appropriate for modeling on a standard gauge layout. I'll grab some shots next week and post them. I've always heard Jersey City has some huge train collections, is there anyone from Jersey out there that's seen one of these phantoms?

Marc