The Marx/Allstate diesel freight train set number 9611 was an electric train set featuring twin diesel locomotives pulling plastic freight cars with 4 wheels and fake trucks to make them look like 8 wheels. It replaced earlier sets Marx made for Sears like the 9644, replacing metal cars with plastic.
Marx diesel type electrical train set 9611
The set consisted a diesel locomotive A-B lashup numbered 54 and a caboose numbered 969 lettered for the Kansas City Southern, a Class I railroad that operated from Kansas City to points south.
The KCS diesel and caboose flanked the following 4-wheel plastic cars to make a five-unit set:
- Erie gondola, maroon, with tractor load, unnumbered
- 9553 Allstate Motor Oil single-dome tank car, blue
A 25-watt transformer provided power, a further indication of the cheapening of the set. The earlier 9644 set had a 50-watt transformer. The 9611 did still come with a loop of wide-diameter O34 track in the form of 8 curved sections and two straight sections. This gave a bigger loop of track than Marx typically delivered with its 4-wheel plastic sets. This made it a good second electric train set. This was because a smaller set with an O27 loop could be set up inside the O34 loop and both trains could run together on separate loops.
Robert Whitacre documented this set on page 75 of Greenberg’s Guide to Marx Trains, Vol. 3.
What was the Kansas City Southern?
The Kansas City Southern was a Class I railroad that connected Kansas City to Mexico and to saltwater ports in the southern United States, giving it the nickname of the NAFTA railroad in its later years. It operated 3,984 miles of track. Founded in 1887, the Canadian Pacific purchased KCS in December 2021 for $31 billion, forming the first railroad to serve the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
I’ve heard that Louis Marx chose a few regional railroads because he liked their paint schemes. Good Kansas City native that I am, I’d never fault him for choosing KCS, though I agree with him that KCS had a good paint scheme.
Other Marx train sets to feature the Kansas City Southern included the 6-inch tin sets 8142 and 9644.
Value
Although Sears sold the 9611 set for $9.84 in 1960 and 1961, it’s worth a lot more than that today. That’s even when you factor in inflation. The Marx KCS diesels and caboose are uncommon, and so is the Erie flatcar with tractor load. I haven’t seen one sell recently but would expect one of these to sell for around $350 or more in reasonable condition.
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.