Ironic, isn’t it, that a billboard for PLASTImarx is on a tin car?
1 Like
As mentioned earlier, I was rather late in recognizing the photographic possibilities of Marx’s 400-series plastic locomotives: the 400, the 490, and even the windup 401. (I think the problem was that I associated them with the bright plastic 4-wheels cars they were most often assigned to haul.)
Coupled to an 8-wheel tender and an 8-wheel livestock car, this 490 was transformed from a toy into something that railfans might have seen and photographed in the 1940s and early 1950s. (There were quite a few 0-4-0 locomotives that were used for switching and for moving cars short distances.)
7 Likes
Quite true, they were popular for urban use especially in warehouse districts. Also they were used in industrial service as well.
2 Likes
On February 12, 1934, the Union Pacific Railroad took delivery of the M-10000, the first U.S.-built lightweight, streamlined express passenger train to be powered by an internal combustion engine. Weighing tons less than the average passenger train, the M-10000 was capable of record-breaking speeds. It was also fully articulated. That is, its cars were semi-permanently attached to each other with their ends coupled together over a shared four-wheel truck that allowed the cars to swivel or “articulate” when negotiating a curve.
4 Likes
Advertised as “Tomorrow’s Train Today!” Marx’s articulated M-10000 was a toy streamliner that almost any Depression-era family could afford. The mechanical three-unit set with a battery-powered headlamp and a figure eight of track sold for the equivalent of about $38 in today’s dollars. The electric version sold for the equivalent of about $82.00. Lionel’s M-10000 set, on the other hand, sold for the equivalent of $366.00 in today’s dollars.
By 1937, Marx’s M-10000 sets, which had proved expensive to manufacture, had been replaced by the M-10005 “City of Denver” articulated streamliner. The tools and dies were shipped to Marx’s factory in Great Britain where they were used to produce a British-made M-10000 as well as British streamliners such as The Silver Link and the blue Coronation train.
6 Likes
I wish Marx had done a Zephyr!
2 Likes
Me too… so I made one out of some junk Marx articulated cars with a Marx Riser Gear windup motor a few years ago:
5 Likes
Very cool 
!
2 Likes
You know, that reminds me of Gort the robot from “The Day The Earth Stood Still.”
The REAL “The Day The Earth Stood Still.” From 1951. With the late, lamented Michael Rennie.
See what I mean?
3 Likes
