ives Archives - The Silicon Underground

How does a Lionel e-unit work?

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 15 May 2020 11:00:18 +0000

The Lionel e-unit was a wonder of ingenuity in the 1930s. But how does a Lionel e-unit work? Open-frame electric motors like the ones Lionel used in its glory days have two major parts: a field and an armature. Both of them

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The copper piece on a locomotive

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 05 Apr 2017 11:00:40 +0000

I get a lot of inquiries about “the copper piece on a locomotive.” They mean a toy train locomotive. Depending on the make of the train, there may be one copper piece on the motor, or there may be two.

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Restoring lithographed train cars

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 11:00:46 +0000

If you have vintage tin lithographed train cars made by American Flyer, Bing, Dorfan, Ives, Lionel, Marx, or another make I’m forgetting and some of them are worse for wear, there are a few things you can do to improve

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“Super utility” tinplate train cars

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 18 Mar 2016 11:00:39 +0000

Tin train cars had a variety of methods to couple them together, but by far the most common method was a coupler commonly called tab-in-slot. The tab from one car mated with a slot in the next. All of the

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Why to never use steel wool to clean electric train track

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 20 Dec 2015 12:00:30 +0000

You may have heard to never use steel wool to clean electric train track, especially Lionel, but you may have never heard the reason why. There is a good reason. Postwar Lionel trains had a feature called Magnetraction, which used

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Re-attaching prewar Lionel trucks

Dave Farquhar — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 11:00:30 +0000

This past weekend I scored a poorly repainted Lionel #602 baggage car (made from 1915-1923) and an Ives #71 passenger car (made 1923-25) at an estate sale. The Ives was in good shape and original, but one of the Lionel’s

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The estate find that broke my slump

Dave Farquhar — Sat, 22 Mar 2014 11:00:33 +0000

I wrote a few weeks ago about finding a scarce Marx windup train at an estate sale, but I actually went a good couple of years without finding a train worth buying until recently. The train that broke my slump

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The Marx connection to Hafner

Dave Farquhar — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 11:00:30 +0000

Hafner was a Chicago-based maker of clockwork-powered O gauge trains during most of the first half of the 20th century. The trains were inexpensive but durable. William Hafner developed the clockwork motor as a hobby around the turn of the

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How Ives-branded track clips ended up in Lionel sets

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 18:59:56 +0000

Ives-branded track clips for Lionel O27 track are relatively common, and although they are often mistaken for pre-1933 items, they were actually manufactured for several decades after the Ives brand name disappeared from the marketplace, and by Lionel, not its

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2011 retail tinplate finds, at Big Lots and Shack

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 13:16:21 +0000

If you’re a tinplate fan like me, it would behoove you to make a trip to Big Lots sometime this week. Big Lots has a selection of building-shaped cookie tins priced at $5 each. The buildings include a town hall,

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