Marx 401 Kitbashing Project

Classic Toy Trains Forum
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… and now for something different!

I’ll be the first to admit that the lowly Marx windup 401 isn’t the best looking locomotive, but at least it’s cheap and reliable… making it a perfect candidate for kitbashing. Now keep in mind that this is definitely a toy train, so the kitbashing result is also toy-like, no scale modeling intended - consider yourself warned! First, for those of you who don’t know what it looks like, this is a stock Marx 401 windup with a plastic tender:

The idea was to build an articulated locomotive out of two 401’s for more clockwork pulling power. However, it needed to be able to go around O27 curves, so it was decided to build a flexible boiler locomotive, as inspired by Santa Fe’s not-so-successful flex boilered locomotives. The powered tender was an afterthought as suggested by some of the guys on the Marx Yahoo group. The addition of another 401 windup motor to the tender turned the locomotive into a flexible boilered triplex. The resulting locomotive was numbered 1203 (401 x 3 = 1203). Unfortunately, the homeliness was also mutliplied by 3… but this thing was built to haul freight, not look pretty:

Here’s a 401 and the 1203 sitting side-by-side for comparision:

Hopefully, the result looks like something Marx would have made if there had been a demand for triple-motored clockwork toy articulated locomotives. Regardless of appearance, 1203 will certainly pull the freight. This is a video of it pulling a 29 car train around my clockwork layout, the longest train I could run without the pilot of the locomot

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That is so cool!

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Thanks for sharing this project with us. I’ve never had a clockwork locomotive and was wondering if there is some sort of speed control which would prevent a fully wound loco from taking off like a rabbitt, allowing the train to run longer between windings.

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The Marx clockworks have a governor that limits the speed of the locomotive. It isn’t adjustable, so you just kind of get what you get for the speed. You can easily increase the speed of the locomotive by oiling the governor, but they usually they go too fast anyway. The 401’s are usually cheap to buy, and almost always run good after a good cleaning and lubing. With a small train, they will run nearly 100 feet on a winding. Lots of fun!

  • James
5

Neat project. Kind of an E.J. Potter vibe to it.

I’d hate to be in that caboose when the slack catches it - zero to ‘warp 1’ in a heartbeat!