I need to stay off Ebay - saw this little locomotive, and just couldn’t pass it up. I’m not well versed in Flyer locomotive types, so I hesitate to identify it, but I do believe it is probably from around 1915 or so - any Flyer experts, please feel free to chime in with an identification. The motor has major problems and the loco has been haphazardly sprayed with black paint, but the body is completely intact so it is a good candidate for a rebuild. I haven’t done an in-depth clockwork project for myself in quite a while, so I think this little guy is going on the workbench next:
It looks to be a Type 1 cast iron clockwork ca 1915-1916. The paint scheme for the engine would look like the one in the picture below - red under the cab window - gold highlights above and below the red and along the running boards. The engine pictured has a clip in motor, a brake rod coming out of the cab and side rods. The Type 1 engine also came like yours with a motor mounted with a screw in front and a slot in back and no brake rod or side rods.
I have no personal knowledge here, but some of the early American Flyer catalogs are online. That engine appears to be shown in the 1914, 1915 and 1919 catalogs. It is hard to be sure because some of the images are small.
@mersenne6 - Thank you for the information, good to know that it did originally come in the two variations. I have another one that does have siderods (another restoration project I did some time ago), good to know they came both ways.
@AmFlyerTom - I appreciate the catalog information, too! Yes, it can be hard to positively identify from early catalog illustrations, thank you for looking them up.
I’m surprised at the amount of wear the motor has - some kid (or kids) really enjoyed running this little engine. It appears that the first intermediate shaft wore so much that it managed to move far enough out of alignment so that the big gear and associated pinion stripped out, ruining the big gear. The mainspring is gone. Everything else is there, but there is so much wear in the sideplates that I will probably build a new motor using parts scavenged from this one and whatever is in my parts bins. This may be a slow project…
As I mentioned above, the windup motor in this locomotive has considerable wear. The first intermediate shaft is worn the most. Clockwork motors typically have shafts that have a short journal that is machined down to a smaller diameter that rotates in a hole in the sideplate. It’s a bit difficult to get a good close-up picture (with my camera), but you can see the wear in the journal area of the shaft. The very end (which sticks out beyond the sideplate) measures 0.085", but the worn area next to it measures 0.070"… 0.015" of wear:
The corresponding hole in the sideplate also has a lot of wear. The winding stem didn’t have a lot of wear on the shaft, but the hole in the sideplate did have considerable wear. All this wear added up to a point where the two gears moved far enough apart that they “stripped”, in this case damaging the teeth on the pinion gear and actually bending over the ends of the teeth on the big gear:
Other parts are worn out as well, so I’m planning on making a new motor utilizing Flyer gears that I’m scavenging out of my parts bins, and I’ll make new sideplates out of 16 gauge steel. It will probably look similar to this motor I made for another Flyer project:
Like that motor, this one has cast iron wheels. It appears that Flyer used them with the tread and flange as-cast. I’m truing them up on the lathe as my first step, and once that is done I’ll figure out what parts I have for the internals. There are some pieces that I can salvage out of the old motor (for instance, I think the governor is fine) and I’ll figure out the rest. Once I have those figured out, I’ll have to make the sideplates. Needless to say, this won’t be a fast process…
Second, here is a picture of one of the drive wheels (left) that has had the tread and outside edge of the flange trued up on the lathe, and one of the idler wheels (right) that needs attention. I just clean up the tread and barely touch the flange to keep it as close to original size as possible:
I’m making a mandrel so I can machine the idler wheels, but am waiting on the right size die to arrive later this week to finish it. Once that is done, I can clean up the idler wheels.
Finally, I cut out new sideplates from 16 gauge plain steel. I will need to lay out all the holes that need to be drilled, which is always a finicky task. One of the original sideplates is shown for comparison:
I’ve found enough internal motor parts that are in serviceable condition, but some of them are very rusty, so they are soaking in EvapoRust for a while.
