Last Updated on June 8, 2024 by Dave Farquhar
A fellow Marx collector asked recently for information about sets containing the elusive Marx windup 490 (also sometimes called the mechanical 490), so I thought I would share what I know about set number 452.
A 1962 exclusive
Marx set 452 featured the windup 490. Both the windup 490 and set 452 didn’t make it to 1963. Marx discontinued the windup 490 after one year, 1962, due to reliability problems from what I understand. The design of this locomotive didn’t lend itself well to the stress of winding up and running Marx’s windup motor. The plastic was too thin and brittle. But the 490 did function very well as an electric and enjoyed a long production run in that configuration, up to the end in 1974. In fact, the 490 is one of the most common and affordable Marx electric locomotives.
The windup 490 isn’t in the price guides. It also doesn’t turn up on Ebay very often.
Marx set 453 replaced set #452 on store shelves, and the 1963 catalogs touted set 453’s sturdy new locomotive.
Marx set 452
My windup 490 came in set number 452, which included an NYC tender and caboose, a Lehigh Valley 28500 high-side gondola, and a Pennsylvania Railroad Merchandise Service boxcar, all of the six-inch tin variety with dimpled sliding tab and slot couplers and plastic wheels. The caboose was the variety without the back railing and ladder and no coupler on the back. These were common omissions that Marx would make in inexpensive sets to meet a price point.
The box was printed in color on cheap, thin cardboard so don’t be surprised if the boxes are hard to find today. I’m sure it was attractive packaging when it was new, but it wasn’t very durable. The number was rubber stamped on the side of the box. If you get one in a tatty box like I did, here’s how I fix toy and game boxes.
My example came with 10 pieces of two-rail track (two straights and eight curves), and apparently it also originally came with plastic telephone poles. My set didn’t have the telephone poles, but Marx telephone poles are fairly easy to find on Ebay. It probably included an instruction sheet as well. Mine is missing.
My example had a mostly-intact price sticker on it, and the price was still readable: $3.98. That’s about the equivalent of $30 a half-century later. So this was an inexpensive train, but price-wise it wasn’t in the league of the $15 sets you see during the holiday season today. Then again, in 1962, the only company in the United States that was willing and able to hit that price point was Marx.
I got my example at an estate sale in St. Louis.
Why Marx set 452 escaped notoriety
As far as I can tell, set 452 never appeared in any catalogs. We can date it to 1962 on the basis of the 490 locomotive. It happens that its successor, set 453, does appear in the 1962 catalog. And it talks up the durability of the new locomotive. So it’s possible the problems emerged even before Marx printed its 1962 catalog and they didn’t even produce the set for a full year. You’ll get in big trouble in some circles if you ever insinuate that Marx made low-quality stuff, but the windup 490 was a case of subpar quality. The 198 locomotive was high quality, but the windup 490 wasn’t.
Had the locomotive not been problematic, set 452 would have appeared in a catalog eventually. Since it seems Marx had a bit of damage control to do, they promoted set 453 more heavily than they might have otherwise.
Much like the windup 490, I can’t find set #452 in any of the Marx books, so it’s a pretty obscure set.
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.