Well, I just returned from a few days bidness on the road to find my 246E set had arrived… Goodie! So I exchange pleasantries with the wife and head down to the basement with my new box… As I start to open the outer shipping box she comes down with our youngest, Gabe, who somehow woke up from his nap wanting to see daddy, so he got to help me open the prize. One by one I opened the boxes and carefully showed Gabe the passeger cars, tender and engine. He kept saying wow ohhh, or maybe that was me… Anyway, I have to say opening that set was more fun than opening the Congressional (PWC) set I got a few years ago. It is so cool to hold in your hands a brand new perfect prewar tinplate passenger set (well a replica made by the original company). So I have now had it open for a few hours, and fortunately swapped my old 262E and junker 613,4,5 cars for the new set with the little guy so the new set is still, well, new. I haven’t run it yet, but have looked at it a good bit and compared details to some other trains from the 30’s. I have some observations, some of which I haven’t seen written either here or the Other forum. Please don’t get the idea I am nitpicking the set, I am just attempting to note what I see as differences. I love the set as is.
The engine has copper plated wire boiler handrails while my original has the stamped variety.
2.The screws on the holding the boiler front on are blackened, originals were not (I don’t think anyway).
Wheels have spokes painted red with recess black. The driver rim flanges are touched up with black although the major portion looks to be chemically blackened.
I am not sure if a 262E should have these later solid spoked drivers with the ebossed gear on the backside of the rim and the long hub. I thought these only showed up on the 249E, 264/5E and maybe the 260/3
Yea, I’m not sayin I like that Made in on the plate either, but I like the set.
Few more details
The siderod guides are screw mounted on this one instead of eyelt riveted and the motor looks to be mounted a small fraction of an inch rearward on this new version. I say this because the front two driver tires are further away (1/32 -1/16") from the cylinders on the new one than the old one. I have not measured it so it is just a looksi at this point.
Looking at #11 above the tender trucks, I would guess they left the tender the same from the 269E set since these trucks would match the ones on those freight cars. I just ran this a little and the height of the tender is something that nags at me a little. You would need to either bend/tweek the tender coupler up or the baggage car coupler down and the same can be said about the loco drawbar. As the set runs, the tender seems to be strung end to end between to high points and kind of darts side to side as the train runs. I am tempted to modify the tender with a pair of correct prewar passenger car truck frames. Of course, if I did that, I might as well change the wheel sets right??[:D]. Well its safe for the moment since I am between layouts. It’ll sit on the shelf for a little while.
I also noticed that mixing of trim finishes must have also happened when these were originally made after seeing some pics of nice original sets on some auction pages.
Nice review. As far as the differences, I will add something: I don’t believe Lionel wants a perfect replica. The reason why is because in the 1960s, when the first tinplate repros started coming out from companies like Williams and McCoy, unscrupulous people would buy the repros, which were very accurate, artificially age them to make them look original, and then sell them as counterfeits. So when a modern repro has a few subtle differences, it becomes much more difficult to pass it off as original with some simple artificial aging.
Lionel’s PWC models have subtle differences from the originals too, which often can be attributed to newer printing methods. But the end result is the same.
THAT is one sweet set! I have a #262 with the four wheel freight cars and the shorty passenger cars and with their original wheel sets they “pop” up in the air going over my modern switches. Perhaps Lionel was concerned with this.
Has anybody run one on FasTrack yet? My PreWar stuff rides on it’s rims going over FasTrack!
Thanks guys, I was hoping to put some good details out there for the people that had some interest in this set, but wanted to know more before they made a decision.
The running I did do was on fastrack on the floor, and didn’t notice much besides the way the tender was riding as I was trying to keep the kids off it, it was like a fumble they were trying to pick up!!!
I don’t have any modern switches to try though so I can’t compare. I just have some 1121’s, 022’s and a couple of 711’s which aren’t even set up now but slowly the layout bench work is coming along. I’ll try to play with the set some more tonight, then its out of town for the week again.