The Marx diesel freight train set number 9613 was an early 1950s electric train set featuring twin diesel locomotives pulling 7-inch freight cars, sold through Montgomery Ward. It’s an attractive set and a very good example of post-war tin lithography, which was becoming something of a lost art at the time.
Marx diesel type electrical train set 9613
The set consisted of two diesel locomotives numbered 6000, one powered and one dummy unit, and a caboose lettered for the Southern Pacific, which was one of the largest railroads west of the Mississippi River at the time. The diesels and caboose flanked the following 7-inch cars to make a five-unit set:
- Pennsylvania Merchandise Service boxcar, any number from 37950-37959
- Wabash gondola, yellow, number 80982
The powered engine had both forward and reverse, so the 9613 set could compete very nicely with a Lionel Scout set. The price and capabilities were similar, but Lionel didn’t offer diesel locomotives at that price point. So the Marx set looked less dated than what Lionel was willing to sell at a similar price.
This set is very similar to set 9500, but this version was for Montgomery Ward.
Other set contents
The 9613 set also included an oval of O27 track and a 50 watt transformer, model 1249 with circuit breaker. This transformer had a set of fixed-voltage posts for accessories running at 13 volts. Marx often gave exclusives to big retailers that were very similar to sets everyone else sold. Marx set 9613’s special thing that made it exclusive was including a slightly nicer transformer. The wattage was the same, but the transformer in the 9500 set didn’t have the accessory posts.
Having the nicer transformer gave Montgomery Ward a chance to push powered accessories as an add-on with the set. Or to sell accessories to them the next year.
What was Southern Pacific?
The Southern Pacific was a Class 1 railroad that operated mostly in the southwestern United States, operating around 13,000 miles of track at its peak. Its track ran through the major cities in California, so this set would have had more appeal in the western United States than a set lettered for, say, the New York Central or Pennsylvania railroads.
The Southern Pacific merged into the Union Pacific in 1996. Southern Pacific has an interesting history beyond railroads. It ran telegraph lines alongside its railroad tracks, taking advantage of the value of the right-of-way, and in the 1970s it started using those lines for long distance telephone calls, creating what became Sprint, the telephone company that merged with T-Mobile in 2020.
Value
I typically see boxed examples of the 9613 set sell for around $100 shipped. Having original paperwork and a box in nice condition helps the value. Boxed examples are reasonably common, because Marx shipped them in sturdy boxes that worked well for storage, and the owners frequently boxed the set back up for storage when they weren’t using it.
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.