We had the Standard Gauge 513 Cattle Car, but let’s do the trifecta of them. The earliest olive, the orange, and the later cream.
Bill
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Spiffy, Bill! Tres cool! Or is that Trey Cool?
Next up it the #514R Ventilated Refrigerator Car. This one has a fair amount of paint chipping and could use a good scrubbing, but I am not ready to risk it. Note the working double plug doors, which faithfully replicate standard practice for reefers.
Notre also that the car’s sides suggest it is single-sheathed, which would not be standard practice. But the texture gives the car a presence that smooth sides combined with the somewhat banal peacock-and-cream (or ivory–not sure after all these years of aging) paint scheme would not. The long brass plate above the doors also contributes to grabbing attention.
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Let’s see: next in line is the 514 Boxcar.
Notice that the sides are embossed in the same pattern as the stock car, but the depressions are not punched out. Again: complex texture; minimum manufacturing expense. This car has sliding doors. The handles are vulnerable and sometimes missing.
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Now, we come to the #515 tank car.
I am pretty sure this one is a repaint: the tank looks too good to be original, but the base might be.
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It looks too orange to be original. Lionel terracotta is more brown.
This is from the TM book on Standard Gauge. Notice how the 515 is darker than the shade of orange used on the 2 cars above it.
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No doubt, Becky. It’s not quite the same as the orange on the boxcar, either. Probably a Krylon color or maybe Rustoleum. No complaint about that! I have done quite a few Krylon repaints, too, of other things.
Years ago, there was a pair of CTT articles about Toy Train Personalities. One was feller by the name of “J. Lionel Krylon,” noted for his not-quite-authentic repaints. I can’t see myself bothering to disassemble the car again to strip and use the correct color.
I agree, don’t fix what ain’t broken. 
For example here’s my number 517 peacock gondola.
I knew it wasn’t right. But I like it so I have a #512 gondola painted with Glidden peacock latex wearing caboose number boards.
My 514 is a project I did myself.
It was overpainted red (why is it always red? 
) and missing one door but the inside (still original) told me it was yellow under all that drippy red. I used off the shelf yellow and brown but I feel leaving the original yellow inside should tell a future collector that it’s not original on the outside. Plus the replacement door is an Olsen’s casting.
My 515 is all original. As is my other 512.
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These 2 are 100% original, which they should be because they’re MTH.
Over in the mad scientist’s lair…
…there’s my #95 rheostat and 150 watt Type K Multivolt Transformer that I use to get my wobbly #8 moving.
Locomotives and cars get all the glory but I love my 80N semaphore!
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My only other Standard Gauge car with original paint is my 520 Searchlight car.
This is the final overpainted crackle version. I went a bit crazy with the color here in the next photo. The true color is 45N green.
But it was the only way I could show you what makes this version unusual. If you look very closely at the oval shaped rub mark at the bottom center of the photo (just above the stanchion) you can make out a tiny ring of terracotta in-between the green and the bare steel. Overpainting the terracotta resulted in the crackle finish on the Searchlight deck.
This one is “original” but certainly NOT because it came from the factory this way! . Most gondolas don’t wear keystone plates!
I suspect this could be the oldest car in my collection. It started life, and my Standard Gauge collection, as a badly overpainted (redwood picnic table red) 112 Lake Shore gondola. I was presented with a box of rust at my local hobby shop around 1995 containing the remnants of a set from 1917. This gondola was the only thing that was complete.
The box had a #33 shell, parts of a 117 caboose and a figure “8” of track, some with brass battery clips. I rigged up a MARX motor inside a basswood box and bought MEW wheels, cowcatchers (the wrong ones) and other parts and cobbled together a working train. I ended up selling the #33 parts after a second restoration attempt got bogged down when the real motor I bought was deemed to need rewinding.
But I saved the frame, trucks and couplers from the 117 caboose…
I defy you to find another one of these crazy contraptions! I call it my “museum car”.
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Nice rolling stock, Becky! What is the origin of the Trevithick?
Nifty!
Now we get to the only “operational” car in the 500-series: the #520 searchlight car. This is the Terra Cotta version.
The car is in good shape, clean and operational. My son gave me this car for Christmas this past year (hence the Christmas tree needles lying on the deck).
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Outstanding repaint work Becky!
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Thanks! I always enjoyed it even though it can be physically tiring, psychologically tedious, always expensive and often frustrating work. But I always believed that to do the job right you need to do whatever it takes.
Although there was an American Flyer tender I worked on once that came extremely close to the recycling bin. The rust on the shell was so deep by the time I got done removing it the steel wasn’t much stronger than tissue paper.
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Becky, while we’re on the subject of restores and repaints have you ever had a subject that just seemed determined to thwart your efforts every step of the way? My last was like that, for some odd reason.
On the other hand some of my repaint subjects seemed to welcome the refresh! Weird.
While we’re doing flatcars, I guess it’s time for the #51 Flatcar with Lumber load.
This car has kinda rough paint, but it’s complete with all stakes and free of rust. I am not convinced the lumber load is original.
Has anyone ever considered the prevalence of logs and lumber for flatcar loads in the hobby? Even the HO manufacturers do it (or, at least, DID it–don’t know anymore). Logs, of course, facilitate the action on operating cars, but postwar Lionel did the sawn lumber thing in conjunction with the Operating Sawmill.
Wood was a cheap material to use. Plastic became even cheaper, and superseded wood in many cases, but wood is still around.
This lumber load is little more than a block of wood with some grooves cut in it to simulate separate pieces and to accommodate the deck. I had never measured it to see what the size is until now: 2 3/4" x 9 3/8" x 1 1/4". Planed down from a 2" x 4", possibly. The bottom also has large, circular holes in it, probably to reduce weight. (I wonder what the NMRA weight standard is for a SG car 
) I should go back and measure the load in my Flyer Lumber Car, which is bigger, heavier, and (I am pretty sure) original.
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It looks right in all respects. Except I tend to wonder if it would have gotten past Lionel quality control without the little blowouts along the edges being sanded down. I can’t believe Cowen would allow splinters in kids fingers . I agree, without a time machine it’s hard to know 100% but it’s really too minor to worry about. The stakes, brake wheels and journals are more critical to collectors.
In order I’m looking for a light green 511, ivory and peacock 514R and and orange and green 513.
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Oh, I’m not worried. I am just a little curious. Loads are . . . harder to keep original.
I offer as evidence my super common #512 Gondola.
It came to me loaded with four of the cask barrels and one of the drum. They seem likely enough to be original, but they do not constitute a set and none of them at all may have come with this car. Who knows? But they look good, and they all “work.” After 90 - 100 years, who could ask for more?
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