Last Updated on August 31, 2023 by Dave Farquhar
The Marx 36000 Chesapeake & Ohio gondola is a somewhat realistic-looking gondola with lettering for a midwestern railroad. It was part of their short-lived 7-inch line, though it’s easy to convert to a 3/16 car if desired. The 36000 dates from 1955 to 1957, making it somewhat more scarce than the Wabash gondola.
The C&O, or Chesapeake & Ohio
The C&O Railroad was a Class 1 railroad that operated in the eastern United States, reaching from Richmond, Virginia to the Ohio River. It eventually reached as far west as Chicago.
The Chesapeake & Ohio is now part of CSX. C&O cars would have been a familiar sight to Marx customers in the metro areas of Chicago, the major cities in Ohio, and eastern cities.
Marx Chesapeake & Ohio gondola
Marx’s 7-inch line featured only two freight car designs, a boxcar and a gondola. And Marx didn’t change up the numbers much on the gondolas, so there is only one variation of in the Chesapeake & Ohio gondola, unlike the PRR and State of Maine boxcars. The challenge with the Chesapeake & Ohio is that it was only produced two years. This makes the Chesapeake & Ohio gondola harder to chase down than its Wabash counterpart.
Marx also used the number on its HO scale Chesapeake & Ohio gondola, which is much more common than the 7-inch version. Putting 8-wheel trucks on the 7-inch version is an easy conversion to make it fit in with the 3/16 line.
Since this car is scarcer than the Wabash version, it sells for somewhat more. The last few times I saw one, it sold for around $20.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.