anyone have a clue as to who made this Marx like piece
Hard to say who made it, need an underside photo of the engine. There used to be many companies that made model trains over the years. Looks like it was an American company is about all I can guess at.
Lee F.
Here is an expired Ebay auction for the caboose, without a picture:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6059513304
Here’s the locomotive:
I’m an avid collector of Japanese tinplate trains like this. A while back when I mentioned my interest in such trains, Dave Farquhar mentioned having this set and asked me what I could tell him about it. This is what I had to say:
"There were three different sets like this:
-Maroon/brown engine, maroon/brown boxcar, orange caboose. In this set the batteries went into the engine’s boiler. This set is much more common than the other two.
-Blue engine, flatcar with logs, white “Gasoline” tank car, orange caboose. This set was battery-electric with a little battery controller that looks like a station.
-Black engine, silver “Gasoline” tank car, orange caboose. In this one the batteries also went into the engine.
As far as the manufacturer goes, I am 95% sure that these were made by Alps. The reason there is that 5% doubt is because the only markings on these sets are “Made in Japan” and the boxes they came in carried a logo with an “M” in a circle that I am not familiar with. However, Alps did make some small (a bit under half the size of these) tinplate sets that ran on Japanese O gauge track (see my last post for that gauge). These trains look just like miniature versions of the East-West sets. Although they have more prototypical markings (the engines and cars are lettered for Rock Island and the tank cars for Mobilgas), the colours and details in the lithography are very close to the East-West sets. There are other simmilarities, such as the large coal bunkers on the engines (I suppose these are supposed to represent tenders, but I prefer to think of these locomotives as large tank engines), European-style brakehouses on the tank cars and the overall shape of the cabooses. Some of these sets also used station battery-boxes that look just like the East-West one. In addition, the boxes thes
It sound like you know about as much as any refference book I checked one out from the libray and the trad mark was in the book but the caption under it said mfg. unknown. Are these set common and are they relitivley inexpensive? I got the pair at an estate auction for $15.00. Is there any websites or refference book on alps? thanks for the info as I have been searching for sometime for answers on this neat loco and caboose.
One thing I found out early on when collecting these trains is that with Japanese tinplate, there are always more questions than answers. My knowledge of these trains has come almost entirely through my own observations of the trains themselves, either by studying the trains I own or carefully watching ebay auctions (whether I bid on them or not) and noting any details I can. Published information about these trains is pretty much non-existent. There are books out there about Japanese toys in general, which probably could give some useful information and might perhaps make reference to train sets, but I have yet to find any detailed information specifically related to trains. The reason is obviously that there are very few (I have yet to meet or read about any) toy train collectors who specialize in such trains (Sakai being the exception, though, as I said before).
As I said in my post, your set would have had a boxcar, also lettered “East West”. It came in a box with an illustration of a train which was unquestionably copied from Lionel. A hudson is pulling a train around a curve. Behind the tender is an orange boxcar. In the background, we see the end of the train, which has a two-dome tank car and a brown SP-type caboose. The box proudly proclaims “Electro Train” with “Transcontinental” in smaller letters underneath and “Operates on One Standard Battery”.
Alps was founded in 1948. In the 1970’s, they stopped manufacturing toys and moved into making electrical components, which they are aparently still manufacturing today. That’s all the information I have on the company’s history. Most Japanese battery operated train sets like these were made in the 1960’s, although there is a chance this set could have been made as early as the late 50’s.
As far as value, anything goes. Due to the lack of information on these trains, there