More random goodness

How brilliant is this little train? Still looking for more pics in the 12 terabyte archive I have...

Marc

Random Picture Goodness

Just sifting through the picture archives and came across this pic my father in law took at the museum. The little Voltamp mining train up top is what caught my attention. More random goodness coming up!
Marc

Voltamp Pride Lines

Check out this wonderful little Voltamp set that the wonderful folks at Pride Lines put together. No doubt about it, losing Mr. Davanzo was a big loss to the train community and to all of us. This little set is something big. I just hope that all of his amazing talent was not (nor will ever be) lost...

Marc

More NTTM Museum Shots

Mike Miller sent me these two pics via Photobucket of some primo Voltamp. I never get tired of these trains....

The Real Deal

Check this out - for the next upcoming NETTE auction a real Voltamp Trolley will be up. I got to see this thing in person last week and it doesn't disappoint. I could never understand why Voltamp enthusiasts liked this stuff so much. That is until I started seeing them up close. There's just nothing like these anywhere. Lionel never stole squat from Voltamp but they should have!!!

marc

A little nostalgia....

It's hard to believe this was published 23 years ago.  There were kids that were born that month that have already graduated from college and can drive (albeit not very far).

The cover was by Ward Kimball.  It was designed to tell a little story.  Blow up the cover (click on it) and see if you can figure out the story Ward was trying to tell.  Voltamp is just timeless and so was Ward....

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

Pride Lines Voltamp 2130 Freight Set

If you have already purchased the Pride Lines reproduction Voltamp steeple cab, or even if you haven't, take a look at these great looking small reproduction Voltamp freights. You can order the complete set including the loco, or order just the cars if you already have the engine. The cars are Standard gauge, just like the loco, and are really done up to look like authentic Voltamp cars. There was a set on display at York. They look great!

Jim

Jon's Custom Made Cars

SGMA member Jon Hinderer came up with some really unique cars for his Pride Lines Voltamp steeple cab loco to pull. Jon writes:

Thanks for the compliment on the mining cars. They're heavily kit-bashed "G
scale" logging cars from Ozark miniatures: I'm working on several more. Whole
thing started when I went looking for Voltamp couplers, and came up with link
and pin logging couplers that hook up to the Voltamp steeplecab by Pride Lines
quite well. There's a bit of work to enlarge the wheel sets from 2 inch to
2 1/4 for Standard Gauge, but nothing patience and a small file can't
accomplish.

Click on the photo to enlarge it, These are great looking cars!

Jim

Not Your Average Reproduction!

For those who haven't seen it, here's the Pride Lines steeple cab now available from John and Joyce Davanzo at Pride Lines. When I talked to John at Maurer he told me that the small cars to go with this great little reproduction will be available at York. This is really another fine model of one of the most popular locomotives from the great Voltamp line of toy trians. Look at that massive double field motor. This piece is hefty!

Jim

April 2007 NETTE Auction is Up

Go out to NETTE and check out their new auction. It is very large and covers a wide range of different trains. There are some definite standard gauge pearls in the mix.

Yes, I know this isn't standard gauge but isn't it neat? The more I look at this Voltamp and Boucher stuff the more I wish they produced more of it. I wonder what designs never made it to the drawing board? The one's that did are classics. Toys just don't get better than these.

M

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.

In Praise of Roadbed

Well, I broke another promise to myself. The first one was that I was going to be the last white man in Houston to do my own lawn (you have to realize, I come from a Northern blue collar town where, to quote Garrison Keillor, an able-bodied man would no more have someone do his lawn than cut his food). But down here the lawn cutting season runs all year long and labor costs are, ahem, minimal (I have an agreement with my guy, I don't check his INS status, he doesn't look at my tax returns). A quick reflection on the time/money ratio finally brought me around...five years too late if you ask me. But I digress (actually, you can't really digress until you get to the point first). I had promised that my layout would be strictly period - nothing would be on it that was made after 1915 (except the MTH std gauge track - nothing is more miserable than trying to get trains to run on old track). That also goes for the materials - only plaster and wood. However, ever since I saw Tom Sefton's layout in "Great Toy Train Layouts", I had been enamored with Lionel's rubber roadbed. It was patented in 1930, quite a bit later than my layout's period date. I wasn't enamored with a comment I read somewhere that said it took him 20 years to acquire it all (over 600 feet!). I had not seen much of it at train shows, and when found, it was always too expensive. Fortunately Ebay seems to have increased the supply, and the average prices, as far as I can tell, haven't changed much since the 80's when I started getting into standard gauge. Throw in a little inflation and now it doesn't seem so expensive anymore, at least for a small oval like mine. And in fact, with a little digging it can be inexpensive. I completely forgot to bid on a lot of it in Stout's Auction a month or so ago (and I mean "lot" as in a lot - about 50 pieces, pretty evenly divided between straight and curve), and it went for less than $2.00 per piece. Another lot showed up on Ebay a few weeks later and to atone, I bought it for about 5 times that price. I only got 6 curve and 12 straight, but the high price was probably because I got two switch bases and a crossing base. Of course I have no crossing and only one switch on my layout (me and the Galapagos Finches are the prime exhibits to disprove Intelligent Design). Installation was a piece of cake, but true to form, I couldn't use the switch base because there wasn't enough clearance with a nearby track. So a friend of mine helped out by digging up some pretty bad pieces that wouldn't be sacrilege to cut up and fit under a switch. If you look closely, horrible things were done to this poor split pin Lionel switch. One swivel rail was removed and a jumper for the early Lionel slider shoes installed across the gap (not attached when the pic was taken), the other swivel rail was spiked into place, and the switch stand had to be removed and museum-waxed into place closer to the rails to avoid being hit by a Carlisle and Finch Interurban on the other track. Don't cry for it, it was a pretty shot switch when I got it, and I can reverse all the changes.

Anyway I would highly recommend using roadbed. That is, unless you like the loud rumbling effect of Standard gauge on a plywood table top; the roadbed really cuts down the sound. I don't know why MTH doesn't recreate this stuff. It seems to me that every layout is a potential market and its a good way to increase the appearance of the track. In fact, its a great way to add something new to an existing layout without having to create new real estate. The fact that I work to produce petroleum, chief component of rubber, has no bearing on my opinion. Lets face it, the 4-wide-ties-per-section look is getting really old (marklin came out with it arond 1891). Note how good the 2" gauge Finch track looks compared to the Lionel tubular track; the roadbed at least helps even the score.

P.S. no need to point out the conditional craptitude of the Lionel 10 set, and the fact it was made in 1925, not 1915. It was the first Standard gauge set my dad bought me, and he didn't buy much more. Its a keeper.
- Alex P

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

Amazing Auction at Maurer (April 6th and 7th, 2007)

As you all can tell, I haven't posted as many auctions up as I used to. That's predominantly because they have become in large part kind of ho hum. Boring to be exact. Would I like more 200 series or 500 series cars. Well, ya. Do I want to look at them over and over again? Not really.

As you know from reading my blog, I like Ted Maurer's auction house. It is NOT pretentious, going to auctions there seems to be consistently interesting and fun and I like the people that run them and manage them. All told one of the best run operations around.

So this auction is something special. Lots of C&F, Knapp, Howard, Ives, some absolutely great Lionel trolleys and some substantial classic standard gauge. There's also some top notch 2 7/8 as well. I'll try and post some of the pics. Remember, this is the estate of a well known and long time TCA person. It took a lifetime to roll a collection like this....


M

PS The pics I'll post are of items that I wish I could see made by our curent crop of manufacturers.

Looking At The Wheels "Go 'Round"

"There is something in the complex human makeup that stirs at the sight of objects in motion -that thrills responsive to the charm of flying spokes or smoothly-moving machinery; in brief, all of us, young and old, 'like to see the wheels go 'round.' It is this fact that makes the operation of a model railway, whether in the store window for attraction and profit, or in the home circle for pleasure and instruction, a thing of unfailing interest and sure return."

- from a ca. 1914 Voltamp catalog

This still holds true today, even in the information age, or whatever it is we chose to call the early years of the 21st century.


Our modern age does have its marvels. I'm just back from a delightful 12 day cruise in South America. I was able to check email and surf the web from on board the ship. I even bid on a couple of EBAY items. The ship was not one of those 3000 passenger giants. However, even though it held only 700 passengers, it had a computer room with about 20 terminals. Online time could be purchased in packages with lower per minute fees on the bigger packages. I found that a 200 minute package was just perfect for us.

I thought about my tinplate trains from time to time while on vacation, especially after the topic came up at the dinner table. I didn't run into any more train buffs, but my orange Lionel tee shirt did elicit a few responses from fellow passengers. I enjoyed describing my fondness for antique tinplate, and I felt good about the hobby and my participation in it.

Now it's back to the fun of standard gauge as there are some interesting events on the horizon. I have a local TCA meet this Sunday, and there are some online autions happpening. I'm also getting ready to publish the Spring issue of Tinplate Times, and I want to get back to working on some projects in my shop. Vacations are fun, but it's also nice to return to something that's fun all year long. Looking at the wheels going 'round is one of those all-year-long fun things that I really enjoy.

Jim

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

Voltamp "Little Hustler" Motor on eBay

Click on the link above to go to the item. This motor is really something, I guess it was probably part of a kit or a power source for toys. These little motors were marvels in themselves. The interesting thing is that these little motors work for almost a century and show no signs of slowing down with decent maintenance.

Anyone know what this thing was for?

Marc

From the Toy Train Museum - Interurban

HPIM2072
Originally uploaded by mrkuffler.

It isn't standard gauge but it is an Interurban I would love to have in my collection!
I didn't get a chance to look at who made this but it really caught my eye, especially with all of the bungalows around it. The color is really vivid, I just wish this little car operated in the display so I could see how it ran.