In addition to your regular trains, does anyone have a collection of Lionel Tin Plate trains that they just have for display or does anyone have Lionel Tin Plate accessories like buildings and stations on their regular operating layouts? As always, thanks.
I mostly run tinplate Lionel, Marx, AF and Ives O gauge trains. Most of it’s prewar, but postwar tinplate Marx is inexpensive so I have a lot of it. As far as accessories I have a prewar Gateman, and some Marx tinplate accessories like light towers.
Postwar was where I got my introduction, but tinplate is something not everyone is into, so I headed that direction because I wanted something different.
Hello Traindaddy!
I have some Prewar Tinplate on hand & I even have the new 269E Tinplate set Lionel made last year & I have the 246E Passenger Set on order from them also. They are not on display,they are in boxes for now as I’ve no layout yet. Hopefully someday. Take Care.
For some reason I cannot explain even to myself, I have no interest in O gauge tinplate BUT I am very fond of Standard Gauge tinplate. The distinction makes not the slightest sense to me, but there it is. I have a small but growing collection of SG–Lionel and IVES, so far–and set up a layout and run them under the biggest (of four) CHRISTmas tree in the living room.
None yet, but I’m interested in acquiring some Lionel and American Flyer tinplate.
Jim
Tinplate is addictive. Lionel tinplate in particular isn’t the least bit realistic, but it’s charming. Some AF and Marx tinplate is more realistic than Lionel postwar, both in scale fidelity and paint scheme, although the tin litho surfaces lack dimensional depth.
Mixing tinplate and scale looks odd to me, although there certainly are people who do just that. But I don’t think tinplate looks awkward at all with early postwar, since Lionel was still using a lot of its prewar tooling in the early postwar era. Even mixing it in with later stuff doesn’t look too out of place–lots of postwar layouts had a mix of tinplate and Plasticville, because AF and Marx were making a lot of stuff out of tinplate well into the 1950s.
I agree with Dave. I have a pre-war 248, a pre-war 56 Gateman, and a few cars. They are sure fun to run in conjunction with Marx, Plasticville and other items.
I was on vacation last summer and I saw an American Flyer O gauge tinplate steamer on display. I was hooked on the spot. Slightly more realistic looking than a Lionel, but quintessential tinplate none the less. It had no number on the cab or I would have hunted down one of my own by now.
I like the old Lionel Torpedos, the 221s, 259Es, etc. And I tend to enjoy the tinplate freight cars more than the passenger cars.
Jim
I have some tinplate from the pre war era and it takes a lot of work to keep it in shape and the parts are a bit expensive. The wheels on the freight cars want to go out of round in the center holes at the axles, so I may need new wheels soon for some.
Another thing about tinplate is that you must be careful when you open the tabs holding the metal in place as the tabs break very easy. Lionel used screws on the later tinplate passenger cars to open the roof to replace the light bulb.
My 249E just needs to have the armature and brushes cleaned up and it works great, still have the original E unit inside it. The freight cars need an uncoupling track to open the couplers or can be opened by hand as they are box & pin design, not knuckle couplers.
Lee F.
Yes, I do. There are tin-plate days and modern days. Sometimes I place only tin-plate engines and cars on the track and other days only modern stuff. I am still slowly building my layout and have collected a few tin-plate houses, semaphores, lanterns, rotating beacon that I always place on the layout to make it lifely. In the meantime also some plastic buildings, Lemax telephone booth, park benches etc were scooped up and I like to place with the trains. Still I think it blends in nicely.
As Dave correctly mentioned there is something enchanting about the looks, smell and the sounds of tinplate trains running on tubular track. I am not a shrink so I can not decipher this, but I think we all understand it. Personally, I think of it as a toy train and therefore have fun to blend this in with other items that could never be real or authentic: red (British) telephone booth on a Lionel (American) layout, plastic engine shed with a pre-war metal engine inside.
The tabs are indeed vurnerable. A year ago I was busy on a 610 passenger car that was in extremely poor condition, almost all tabs broke off / crumbled. I restored that with brass strips, because it solders do easily on the tin-plate, but getting the position completely right was a bit more difficult than I thought on forehand. That brings me also to the other positive value of tin-plate: it is metal and can be repaired more easily than plastic items. It does not have the artificial value of plastic and the perceived value is higher (well in my case). So, mix as you go, I would say. One of my strange ideas is to buy a poor 811 flat and remake it into a container car and solder the container from brass plates. Which container road name to choose for a 1920-30 train: another dilemma…
Greetings
Eggo
Don’t have any original prewar Lionel (yet), but I do have some reproductions. I love this stuff! [:D]
- Clint
Thanks to all. Very interesting…I (don’t want to admit it yet) may have been bitten by the ‘bug’. We’ll see [;)]
My layout is all original prewar tinplate. I love it. The trains are all O-gauge. I have a number of accessories as well. If you are interested in seeing more, here is a link to my website that I’m slowly but surely building.
traindaddy1,
I have a nice tin plate freight set on the wall that was my dad’s, a 229 grey engine and tender with dump car, tanker, box car, and caboose. Also I run a tin plate passenger line, though its pulled by a modern 4-4-2 atlantic (i know, that’s a crazy mix, but it looks nice). I never went for careful realism, so I really like tin plate stuff.
I have a few common Lionel pieces on my postwar layout. But one really neat piece is a marx station. I don’t know the number but has to be right around WWII. If you turn the piece over it is recycled from some other toy they were making at the time. Stamped out right over the other tinplate toy sheet.
Marx did that a lot, Aurora. Nothing went to waste.
Jim
VERY, VERY NICE. Thanks.
[#ditto] I really enjoy seeing photos of your layout. One of my favorites! And those tinplate beauties…! [tup]
Jim
I enjoy his layout as well. Nice to see even more on his website.
So I guess I assumed tinplate was tinplate. You know, just slightly larger versions of my MTH trains sets, but made of metal with glossy paint. Well, I just got back from a local layout where everything is Lionel Standard O. I never realized that Standard O was almost the size of G…I guess I need to get out more. It’s not something you see everyday. Very nice stuff.
Wes
Wes,
Are you referring to Standard O or Standard Gauge? Standard O is not made of tin–it is scale in size and nearly scale in detail–but Standard Gauge trains are tin.