During the post-war era, Lionel supplied its dealers with adapters that allowed pre-war box couplers to work with the post-war knuckle couplers.
Lionel themselves hasn’t made these adapters for decades, but reproduction parts dealers make reasonable copies of them that we can still purchase and use today.
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The Lionel 6457 caboose is a common and nearly iconic postwar Lionel car. It, or one of its close relatives, is probably the caboose you remember if you are into postwar-era Lionel.
They don’t make light bulbs like they used to. Well, at least they don’t make miniature light bulbs that work every time anymore, assuming they ever did. Here’s what to do when your brand new Lionel bulbs won’t light.
After decades of hard play, the shiny tin plating on old electric train parts can wear off, leaving a dull surface that doesn’t look great, and is prone to rust. You can get plating kits so you can replate the parts, but the kits are expensive and can involve chemicals you don’t necessarily want to keep laying around. Here is an inexpensive alternative to replating that you can do at home to restore old tin parts.
Lionel scenic plots debuted in 1927 with the #195 illuminated terrace, a 19×22 inch platform built to provide a landscape for three houses, two #56 lamp posts, and a #90 flag pole.
The plot, and the various others that followed, solved two problems. They provided instant scenery for temporary floor layouts, and instant scenery for more permanent layouts for those who didn’t have the ability or confidence to attempt to scenic their layout themselves.
Here’s a question that comes up from time to time on train forums. What do the build dates on Lionel trains mean? In the Lionel postwar era, not a lot. At least not if you’re looking to figure out the actual age of the model.
The build dates on Lionel postwar trains, and largely for MPC-era trains as well, indicate when the model was first released, not when the example you hold in your hands was built.
If you’ve lost the original instructions, it’s certainly not obvious how to connect a Marx transformer to track and otherwise set up a Marx train set. Especially if someone else always set it up. But don’t be intimidated. It’s low voltage wiring. And it can be as few as two connections. Here’s how to set up a vintage Louis Marx electric train set.
If you have an American flyer whistling billboard and didn’t get the instructions, or misplaced the instructions sometime over the decades, here’s how to wire one. And if you want to use it with another brand of transformer, this will also help.
About 20 years ago, I posed a question. What did train enthusiasts use on their train layouts before World War II, when they didn’t have Plasticville? There’s no single answer to that question, but one of the things they might have used was a Milton Bradley product called Bumpalow.
Because Marx trains were much less expensive than their competitors, they didn’t always get treated with the same respect as their contemporaries. And sometimes that means when you find them, they are filthy. Dirty, scratched, and even rusty Marx 6 and 7-in tin trains respond well to basic cleaning. Here’s how to clean Marx tin lithographed trainsRead More »How to clean Marx tin lithographed trains