Ok, Northwoods Flyer has a very nice prewar Flyer thread that keeps going and going but I don’t see much of the 3/16th’s stuff in there. I’ve been a 3/16ths O nut off and on for about 30 years now and just recently have been on a binge in aquiring a few more pieces. Now I’ll be the first to admit much on my stuff may be junk to some, but I don’t really care, I buy what I like in the condition I can afford. The first 3/16th’s O piece I aquired was a 559 K-5 Pacific and 558 non chugger tender. The 559 has what AF called Directional Remote Control which was like Lionel’s Magic Electrol and used a second DC pulsed coil to energize the main reverse unit coil. This allowed the engines to run in one direction without cycling through the normal forward- neutral-reverse sequence unless the DRC controller button was pressed.
Above is my trusty 559 Pacific. Its been one of my favorite loco’s even though I didn’t have cars it could pull for about 10 years. I just recently purchased the 540 DRC control button off the bay and hope to get it cleaned up and functioning in the near future. You can see these locos have no reverse lever slot, but you can see just behind the steam done a small hole that allowed manual access to the DRC coil if intervention were needed.
Those look like a lot of fun projects. Good luck with them. Although I buy “S” and haven’t bought any of the 3/16" “O” yet, I feel the same as you do about buying this stuff. It is more fun most of the time to buy and restore junkers than to buy complete pieces. Some times you get lucky with an inexpensive project, and other times you invest a bit too much. That’s not important to me. What matters to me is the journey, not the destination. This way of thinking is what is driving me on the 326 that I’ve been restoring.
Looks great Dennis. How about reposting it as part of Northwoods Flyers thread. It would be a welcome addition over there and would help fill in one of the blanks.
There are several fans of AF here on this forum. I always enjoy looking and all Gilbert AF. Greg has been tempting me for years to branch out from S. Keep posting pictures, especially the innards!
Interesting, I haven’t heard of Flyer 3/16th’s gauge trains before! I knew that they made tin plate trains but not semi-scale O gauge, was this an effort by Flyer to compete with Lionel’s 773, 225, 224… Or was it just a change because Gilbert bought American Flyer? Is this as easy to find at shows as Lionel prewar or is it harder to find? Thanks!
Basically Gilbert wanted to enter the toy train market and wound up purchasing AF and moving it to New Haven as is described in Northwoods Flyer’s Prewar Flyer thread. I have bunch of old TCA articles on the entry of AF into 3/16ths in the first place, mainly to compete in the scale market. The TCA articles detail the switch over to 2 rail S after the war and a lot of the meetings and engineering that when on before and during the war to make the the switch. The reason they did not switch right away was claimed so as not to alienate the existing O gauge customers. The war provided a good break point. I’ll try to dig the TCA stuff out and scan it, its pretty interesting. It even goes into the patents AF entered and shows a version of the lumber loader they chose not to make that used the crane cab and some parts that were eventually used on the 752 coal loader. also a three rail log dump car with they of course never made.
I/we can certainly do that. I was thinking this way all the 3/16th’s stuff would stay together, but then that is part of the fun, searching. I’ll throw some over there as well. I’ve definitely spent some time admiring the streamliners ( and everything else) on that thread!
Thanks for the kind words about the Pre War American Flyer Thread. I’m glad you have enjoyed reading it. It has been a lot of fun for me during the two years of its existance.
Let me second mersenne6’s suggestion that you post some of your photos over there too. The only reason that you don’t find much 3/16 O gauge over there is that I don’t have very much of it in my collection. I think it would be great to have you add information over on the other thread too to round out the information on Pre War Flyer. You are one of the first people who has mentioned that you collect it with a passion. I think its one of those sleeper areas of collecting. It would be great to have all of the information about 3/16 in one place, as you are doing with this thread. So please continue to post away on both threads. I’ll contribute pictures of the items that I do have here.
As Jim Sturgeon-Fish mentioned I’ve been trying to lure him into collecting Pre War O for a while. Now if we can just encourage him and Jim greenprobe to start a Gilbert S gauge thread with photos and information we will pretty much have American Flyer covered here on CTT.
Thanks for undertaking this project. I’m looking forward to reading it.
Thanks for the info and pictures on the DRC. Any chance you have a photo of the other side of the motor. I am trying to re- wire an AF O guage #806 with the DRC. The wiring on my 806 was destroyed by the previous owner.
Ogauge, even though I have no particular collecting interest in 3/16/O myself, I can appreciate all the time and skill and care you’ve put into assembling your own collection. I can’t imagine anyone considering any of those fascinating prewar examples “junk.” Those are pieces of history, and you’re saving them from an anonymous ash heap. Please keep up the good work, and I’d welcome any more photos you’d care to post. Thanks for sharing this.
The change to ‘semi-scale’ was in part at least technological. By the mid-late thirties, die-casting allowed boilers to be made with much more detail than had been possible with sheet metal / tinplate trains. Plus of course there was the AF/Lionel rivalry; if one went to diecasting, the other one had to keep up!!
People are sometimes surprised (and a little confused) about 3/16" O gauge semi-scale / “scale detailed” trains and why they were made. In the thirties money was scarce and scale model locomotives were either a) “kits” requiring a home machine shop to complete, or b) very expensive (probably more than a brass locomotive would cost today) or c) both. Most rank-and-file model railroaders ran a mix of scale kits and cheaper Lionel and AF equipment and track, usually using
Jim - [#welcome] to the forum! Guys I have American Flyer prewar O gauge and postwar S. This is VERY interesting! Keep the pics and info coming please.
My son got me interested in Pre War American Flyer and I have three of the 3/16 scale locomotives and about 30 freight and passenger cars. The freight cars are well executed for their time and compare favorably to what other manufactures were making. This include the pressed steel cars and the die cast cars. The major different in casting of the locomotive between the post war and prewar locomotives was the cylinders. They are wider in the pre war versions to accomodate the wider track. Very much like Atlas does with some of their locomotives today that are close to 3/16 inch scale.
I also want to thank all who have contributed to this thread. It has been a real learning experience for me. There is so much knowledge in our community that has not been well documented yet in publications. This is very true with American Flyer Trains. As with any business the bottom line is all that matters so what can be put together and sold is more important than what is shown in the catalog. Without this venue the plethora of varations produced would go un acknowledge! Thanks again!
Gilbert 3/16 O by John Grams, Sept 2000 (On overview of the product line) and The original Pennsylvania Flyer by Neil Besougloff, Nov 2005, about about the 3/16 O gauge Pennsylvania K5.
A lot of this information is well known to those of us who are “old timers” in S gauge.
Most of us know that the “4 piece” S gauge Steam locomotives had wider steam chests than necessary for S scale because they were originally set up to run on O gauge track and the one piece steamers of the early 1950s were the first AF steamers designed exclusively for S gauge track .
For whatever it is worth, from my reading of this forum over the last 10 years, I did not get the feeling that most of the members on this forum would be interested in this material. I am glad to see someone is interested and I am glad that the discussion has been respectful and constructive.
Little tommy I like A.F. but don’t own any as not sure what I’m looking at is worth. with that said yes I run O and wouldn’t mind a few pieces of A.F. O and would actually like to have a S set more for display than for running.
Personally i like all gauges just that n definitely is to small and HO is almost there so I like my O and I’m more comfortable working on O as I have had it almost as long as I can remember
Right after the Marx set, my dad got me an AF set over fifty years ago. and although I am into Marx now and had an AF “S” set as a kid, until this thread began, I had no idea any of this existed.…I don’t know what I am looking at either, but it is great to learn about it, and this stuff looks terrific (refurbishment or not. ) I agree as far as AF “O”.I would like to learn more and would consider AF “O” equipment…Does anyone know if there are reproductions out or planned in the future?.
There isn’t as much out there as you might hope for, as a lot of it fell prey to WWII scrap drives and the diecast cars and engines are often victims of “zink pest”. My only O Scale 3/16 items are a pretty beat up Royal Blue, some AF O gauge track and a old AF transformer that looks too unsafe to plug in.
I don’t know of any plans to reproduce any of it, but it might be a good deal financially for the maker because they could make both O gauge 3/16 stuff and S gauge 3/16 stuff with minimal retooling.
On my personal wish list, I’d like to have one of the 3/16 O gauge AF composite gondolas (never made in S gauge after the war) as a S gauge item (I just can’t justify ruining a collectors item by “retrucking” the O gauge item).
Great topic. We old guys get a lot of enjoyment of seeing the photo’s, as well as the discussion, of what we had in our youngest days! The 3/16" O scale CTT articles were top notch.[8D]
