marx

I need to build this in O gauge

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , , , , , ,

I visited the site because the link promised billboards. I got so much more. Now the fine Scot in me really wants to build this box car.

Since my trains are O27, not HO, I can’t use his artwork directly. But his HO scale decals might be suitable for a tinplate 6-inch car like those American Flyer and Marx used to sell, since those 6-inch Marxes basically look like double-height HO cars.This is precisely why I’m not a rivet-counter. Trains are supposed to be fun. This car doesn’t exist in the real world, but it’s fun. The Second Amendment Gun Shop with a sign in the window saying “No weapons allowed” doesn’t exist in the real world, but it’s fun.

I try to keep elements of what I do believable–you won’t see any low-rider Honda Civics running around my layout, which is supposed to look like the 1950s because my trains were built in the ’50s–but since I can’t build models of a specific time and place, what’s the point of getting uptight about whether M-K-T box car 45001 really existed?

But hey. For some people that’s the best part of the hobby. That’s OK. Just don’t try to stop me from having my fun.

Learning about scratchbuilding the hard way

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , ,

I haven’t had a lot of free time the past couple of weeks, and as you’ve probably gathered, I haven’t been spending a lot of it in front of a computer. I’ve been in the basement, learning how to make stuff for the train.

Along the way, I’ve learned a few things, mostly from experience rather than from books. I still have a long way to go.Not all paints and finishes are compatible with one another. When I tried to spray one brand of glossy finish atop a different brand of black paint, the paint crinkled. Spraying paint thinner on it would have done less damage.

Aside from the hard lesson on paints, clones of the old 6-inch 4-wheel Marx train cars are very simple to build. That must have something to do with why they cost 59 cents when they were new.

The look of lithographed tin can be reasonably approximated by printing a design on, of all things, plain paper, then spraying it with the same glossy finish that ruined the paint job on the first car I built. Attach said paper with spray adhesive, and only the very observant will notice your car isn’t tin litho.

Styrene plastic is very easy to work with. You can build simple things from it very quickly, so long as you use an MEK-based solvent, rather than the cement that comes in tubes. Solvents give a stronger bond, and after holding the joined piece together for two minutes, you can continue to work with it.

Aluminum is essentially free, and can be cut with scissors, but joining it is a pain. Joining two pieces with solder is very difficult. Epoxy is easier, but it’s harder to work with than the plastic solvents.

Tin and brass are extremely easy to solder. I now know why so many hand-built metal models are made of brass. It’s strong, reasonably easy to form, and not terribly expensive.

Sheet metal is dirt cheap at onlinemetals.com, but the $3 worth of brass that it takes to make a train car will cost $10 to ship, even if you have them deliver it by stagecoach UPS ground.

It’s very easy to end up paying $12 for a rustbucket Marx train car on eBay, and it’s more satisfying, if you have the requisite ability, to watch cars you made yourself go around your track than to watch cars you sniped with four minutes left. (I’ve only done that once. The rest I bid the way nice people do.) So most of the time you’re better off with your $13 worth of brass, whether you bought it online or at the local hobby shop.

You can fabricate your own Lionel- and Marx-compatible axles using 3/32-inch brass rod from a craft or hobby shop, cut to 1 3/4 inches in length for Lionel, or 1 7/8 inches for Marx. Put a dab of solder or epoxy half an inch inside to keep the wheels from going in too far.

Fixing a Marx 490 O27 toy locomotive

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , , , , , ,

Note: Please don’t do what I did in this post. Chances are you’ll make things worse in the long run.  If you’re looking for information on fixing a Marx train that won’t run, go here for instructions on how to do that.

I fixed my Marx 490 locomotive this weekend. I used the tips in The All Gauge Model Railroading Marx Trains guide. Scroll down to the heading titled, “The Marx motor.”

I was skeptical because these instructions call for WD-40, and it seems I’ve read a hundred other places never to use WD-40 on any model train. But my Marx 490 wasn’t running well, and it would cost more to have it professionally repaired than it’s worth.But before I continue, let me interject something. If you’re here from Google because you just found a box of old trains that say “Mar” on them, the company is Marx, not Mar. And the trains look a lot like Lionel, but they’re not Lionel. In a few rare instances, Marx trains are very valuable. But in most cases, a Marx isn’t worth as much as the box a Lionel came in. Which is why I said it would cost more to repair my Marx than it was worth. I just had two Lionels repaired for $25 each, plus parts. You can usually get a Marx 490 with some cars on eBay for $25.

But that’s not to say Marxes don’t have charm. They certainly do.

There. I feel better now. Back to the story. Where was I? Oh yeah. WD-40. I didn’t use WD-40 on my Marx. I used Gunk Liquid Wrench instead. Two reasons: The main purpose behind WD-40 and similar oils is to clean, rather than lubricate. They leave a little bit of lubricant behind, but not a lot. Gunk Liquid Wrench, like WD-40, is primarily a solvent. But it has synthetic oil in it, whereas WD-40 has kerosene in it. In my mind, this makes Liquid Wrench a better choice for this purpose because what little lubricant it leaves behind when the solvent evaporates will be of higher quality and last longer than WD-40’s lubricant.

But there was a second reason. Liquid Wrench was on sale, so it was cheaper. I also thought long and hard about Marvel Mystery Oil in a spray can–it works in cars and airplanes something wonderful–but opted for Liquid Wrench because the instructions called for a penetrating lubricant, and I didn’t know if the Marvel would exhibit the same kinds of properties. I’m a journalist-turned-computer tech by trade, not a chemist.

But first, I tried omitting the WD-40 step and just cleaned it with Goo Gone and TV tuner cleaner. Like I said, every time I turn around I read somewhere that you shouldn’t go near a model train with WD-40. Between the TV tuner cleaner and the Goo Gone, the train looked brand new very quickly. I was impressed. It ran very nicely too, but the next day it didn’t run at all. Figuring that now I had nothing to lose, I broke out the Liquid Wrench.

After a spraydown with Liquid Wrench, it ran too well–it flew off the track and fell 4 feet to my concrete floor. Ouch. That left a mark. One corner of the cab busted off, and it took me a good 15 minutes to find it. After I’d let the locomotive run 20 minutes–with a big load this time, to slow it down and keep it on the track–I re-glued the broken corner with some Tenax-7R plastic welder. Tenax is great stuff–apply a small amount of it, hold the pieces together for a minute, and they’ll stay. It’ll take 8 hours for the joint to completely dry and reach full strength, but after just a minute, the joint is as strong as it would be with every other glue I’ve ever tried on plastic.

Lesson learned: Keep your test track on the floor. Or surround it with pillows. Or use a Marx transformer that can send just a couple of volts on its lowest setting, so slow actually means slow.

The next day, I ran my 490 the opposite direction on my track–the first time I’d ever run a locomotive that direction on the track. And guess what? I found a bad spot on the track. It derailed–again–and the piece I’d glued fell off in spite of the cushions I’d placed all around my table.

Then I remembered that Tenax is amazing stuff if your two pieces fit snugly, because unlike some glues, Tenax doesn’t fill in the gaps at all. The break must not have been clean enough to give the Tenax adequate surface area to create a very strong bond. So I re-glued with epoxy, since epoxy will fill gaps. It held this time.

So now Marxie has a battle scar and he’s probably worth half what he was worth a week ago, but he runs very well. It’s short on ability but long on heart–it struggles pulling loads that won’t make a Lionel break a sweat. But it’ll pull them, and you can see it working hard doing it. And where a Lionel will just give up on a grade with a curve with a long load of cars, the Marx just keeps spinning its wheels, ever faster, until something manages to catch and it propels on its way.

I think that’s what I like about it. It never gives up.

There are a few other things to like about them too. Like I said before, you can buy a Marx locomotive for less than the price of the box a Lionel locomotive came in. Marxes are easy to take apart–mine’s held together by four joints, easily pried apart with a small slotted screwdriver. And the motor is simpler than a Lionel, so it’s easier to understand. If you want to learn how to fix toy trains, Marxes are easy to learn on, and if you mess up, you ruin a $15 locomotive rather than a $100-$1,000 locomotive.

Wikipedia hits 200,000

Dave Farquhar net.culture , , , , , , ,

Over the weekend, Wikipedia reached the milestone of 200,000 entries in its free encyclopedia. Dan Gillmor praised it in his syndicated column.As usual, Slashdot got wind of it, and as usual, people who’ve never even seen the thing started spouting off about how something that anyone can change can’t possibly be accurate or useful. (Wonder how many of those people run Linux?) At least one person ran over there and vandalized some pages to demonstrate his point. And I’m sure the edit got reversed within a few minutes when someone noticed a change in a watchlist. I, for one, visit occasionally and whenever a change pops up in my watchlist, I look at it out of curiosity. Sometimes I learn something and sometimes I find defacement, which I can then fix.

But I guess if Slashdot discussions were the only thing I ever read, then I wouldn’t have that high of an opinion of something written by random people at will, either.

A more valid criticism is that Wikipedia, by its very nature, can never be accepted as a source for scholarly work. But then I thought back to the papers I wrote in college, and I don’t believe I ever used an entry out of any encyclopedia as a source in any paper that I wrote. And being a journalism major who was 3 credit hours away from a history minor and who filled most of his electives with English and political science classes, I wrote a lot of papers in college. When I wrote my paper on the influence of William Randolph Hearst on the William McKinley administration, I may have looked up both Hearst and McKinley in an encyclopedia to get background information, but I doubt it. Why use an encyclopedia when there are so many good, specialized texts available?

There is still valid use for questionable sources in scholarly work anyway. One professor actually encouraged us to look in Mother Jones and American Spectator when possible, just to get the views from two extremes on the topic at hand. And Wikipedia can give you leads to follow, even if you don’t end up citing it in your bibliography. The material in Wikipedia came from somewhere, after all.

I’ve had a love-hate relationship with Wikipedia for the past year or so. I left it entirely when I got tired of an overzealous editor deleting my additions. I guess I wasn’t the only one who complained about her; she’s since disappeared. I used to look at the day in history and try to fill in the gaps; for example, I noticed on one of Jesse James’ anniversaries that he didn’t have an entry, so I put one together. Unfortunately, high-profile stuff seems to be what attracts both vandals and overzealous editors.

So when I came back, I decided to concentrate on things like baseball, obscure old computers, and things that have connections to Missouri, particularly Kansas City and St. Louis. Those are more my areas of expertise anyway, which makes writing them a lot less work, and the topics are obscure enough that I’ve been mostly left alone. Those edits that do pop up usually are true improvements, rather than someone going on a power trip. My entries get linked much less frequently on the front page now, but I’m happier.

Another thing that I’ve taken to doing is to always check Wikipedia whenever I’m researching something. Sometimes Wikipedia has good information, but may be missing some detail I found elsewhere. Sometimes it has very little information. In either case, I try to enter the information I found. I recently created entries for Lionel Corporation, American Flyer, and Louis Marx and Company. Of course I got interested in them because of my recent renewed interest in toy trains, and during the time period I’m interested in, those companies were the big three in the United States. Some of the information about those companies is difficult to find online. Or it was. Now it’s in Wikipedia, which makes it easier to track down.

According to Wikipedia’s records, I’ve contributed to 323 entries. Most of those are pretty minor. There are lots of people who’ve contributed a whole lot more than me.

But I often notice a domino effect on my entries. Soon after writing the Lionel entry, I wrote one for O gauge model railroading in particular, and made an addition or two to the main model railroading article. Soon, other people were making their additions to specific gauges and scales, or creating them when entries didn’t exist. Within a few days, Wikipedia had some good information on the topic. It’s anything but exhaustive, but I’ll put it up against any other encyclopedia’s offering.

One difference that I have definitely noticed about Wikipedia, as opposed to conventional encyclopedias: Wikipedia has a much better pulse on pop culture. I’ve often lamented that people who have entries in the more traditional encyclopedias don’t have entries in Wikipedia, but every teenybopper band that’s come along in the past couple of years has an entry. But I guess ultimately that’s going to prove to be Wikipedia’s strength. In 30 years, it’ll be possible to go to Wikipedia to find out what the hubbub about Justin Timberlake was about. And in 30 years it may be the only place. (One can only hope.)

And in 30 years, those people who deserve more attention undoubtedly will have gotten their entries as well.

I definitely encourage people to look up their topics of interest over there and think about adding some of their knowledge.

Outsourcing hurts all of us

Dave Farquhar Society , , , , , , , ,

Cringely has written eloquently about the effects of outsourcing to India.

Outsourcing hurts more than just IT.Every day, I drive past an old factory. I don’t know what’s in it now. From its appearances, not much, because I’ve never seen any traffic around the place. The sign and the smokestack says “International Shoe Company.” Curious, I did a little bit of digging. It seems that at one time this was the largest shoe manufacturer in North America. It’s pretty obvious that it isn’t anymore. It’s not for lack of people around to staff the factory–there are plenty of people in the neighborhood. From the looks of some of them, they could use a job. But the factory sits, abandoned, for one simple reason.

We don’t want to pay people $5.25 an hour to make our shoes. Those of us who are willing to pay people $5.25 an hour to make our shoes can’t, because not enough other people are willing.

So the once-proud factory sits.

I drive past a smaller operation every day too. It’s boarded up and fenced up, and overgrown with weeds. A faded sign says, “Missouri Candle and Wax Co.” It obviously never employed as many people as ISCO did. But there’s a neighborhood all around it. I’m sure at one time it supported a few households in the neighborhood around it.

Not anymore. The neighborhood’s in better shape than the candle place, due to some rehabbing that’s going on. But I guarantee the people moving into those houses don’t work anywhere in the neighborhood, because the jobs aren’t there anymore.

The jobs aren’t there because we don’t want to pay people $5.25 an hour to make our candles.

Now, I can kind of see paying lower prices for shoes, in some cases. You need shoes. I can’t so much as walk to my car without shoes, some days. If you don’t have a lot of money, you’ll buy the cheapest shoes you can find. It’s a matter of survival.

But candles? Candles are a luxury item.

Like Cringely says, the government isn’t going to do anything about it because the government doesn’t care. Big business wants to offshore, and modern Republicans don’t seem to believe big business is capable of doing anything wrong. If big business says it should outsource, well then, God Himself must have handed them a stone tablet that says, “Thou shalt outsource.” Democrats won’t solve the problem because Democrats need needy people in order to keep their jobs. So Democrats profit from offshoring just as much as Republicans, although for different reasons.

Richard Gephardt suggested solving the problem by instituting an international minimum wage. That would solve it neatly–if a Chinese worker makes $5.25 an hour, then suddenly it’s cheaper to pay the $5.25-an-hour worker who lives next door to make your candles and shoes and computers.

But Richard Gephardt isn’t going to be our next president, and Richard Gephardt knows just as well as you and I know that there won’t be an international minimum wage coming down the pike any time soon. It’s just election-year rhetoric.

That means you and I have to solve the problem.

Cringely said one thing that I disagree with. He said companies who offer good customer service grow. Maybe sometimes they do, but if that were true, virtually everybody would be bigger than Wal-Mart, because at Wal-Mart, “customer service” is synonymous with “customer returns.” If you need to know where you would find mineral oil, it’ll take you half an hour to find an answer to your question. If you’re lucky.

I guarantee if you walked into A. G. McAdow’s in Pharisburg, Ohio in 1883 looking for mineral oil, my great great grandfather could tell you if he had it and where it would be. He’d even know what the stuff was.

I’ll tell you what customer service is. It absolutely shocked me when I got it last week. I went to Marty’s Model Railroads, and I’ll admit, the reason I went there was because they have the best prices I’ve found locally on used train stuff, and I can get it without the hassle of bidding on eBay. I asked Marty if he had a Marx coupler. He went and looked. He came back and said he didn’t have a coupler but he had an entire truck, and asked what I wanted to do with it. I said I wanted to make a conversion car. He pointed me to the cheapie bin, told me exactly what I should look for, and then when I found an $8 car that was suitable, he took the car, along with the Marx truck, into the back room, drilled out the Lionel truck, and came back with the one-truck Lionel car and a nut and a bolt. We put the car back together on his counter, by the checkout. Then he charged me 10 bucks.

Ten bucks would have been a good deal if he’d just handed me all the pieces and said good luck. But with his tools in the back room, he was able to do in five minutes what would have taken me most of an hour.

Later that week, I took in two Lionel locomotives for repair and bought another conversion car–this time, not because I knew I’d get the lowest price, but purely because I knew he’d treat me well.

When I go to pick those locomotives back up, I need to tell him that’s exactly why.

Marty’s business is growing, but I don’t know if that’s because of outstanding customer service or if it’s simply because he’s the only shop left in eastern Missouri that fixes Lionel trains.

Activists talk about thinking globally and acting locally. Building a sustainable economy requires less global thinking and more local acting.

Don’t go to Lowe’s and Home Depot if there’s a corner hardware store you can go to. The last two times I’ve gone to a local mom-and-pop hardware store I got help without asking for it, got exactly what I needed, and got out of there faster than I’d be able to get out of the big-box store. And as far as the price, I probably made up for it on gas. Remember, Lowe’s and Home Depot are megacorporations. More of the money you spend at the mom-and-pop place will stay in the area.

Don’t go to Wal-Mart if you can get what you need someplace else. Target is a megacorporation too, but it puts more money into the communities it works in. But if there’s a locally owned business left, frequent that.

Don’t go to chain restaurants if there’s a locally owned place you can go to instead. It seems like St. Louis has a thousand delightful locally-owned restaurants. There is no reason whatsoever for a St. Louisan ever to eat at Olive Garden.

And wherever you go, check to see where the product you’re buying was made. I needed a putty knife the other week. The cheapest one was made in China. The one on the peg next to it was made in Canada and it cost 10 cents more. I bought the Canadian one. Neither one helps the U.S. worker, but when I buy the Canadian one, I know the guy who made it was paid a fair wage, and that’s worth the extra 10 cents to me.

Sometimes you have to get creative to avoid these things. If I want model train stuff, Lionel and its competitors all seem to be building everything in China. But I don’t have to buy new stuff.

The same goes for clothes. If all the clothes you like are made in countries that operate as the world’s sweatshop, buy used ones. At least then the operation that created the sweatshop doesn’t profit a second time. Besides, used clothes are cheap. And no one will ever know those year-old clothes weren’t originally your year-old clothes.

DVD players are all made in China today. So there, the decision is pretty easy. Buy the cheapest one. Then you’ve got more money left over for the times when you do have a choice.

Finding a list of countries whose workers earn a living wage has proven difficult for me. Does anyone else out there have such a list?

Of course, I would first prefer to buy locally made and then used, given the option.

Operate incompatible rolling stock together with conversion cars

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , ,

In the early 1950s, Lionel had two different standards for the couplers on its train cars. “Serious” sets used its knuckle couplers. Entry-level, or “Scout” sets, used one-piece couplers that came to be known as “Scout” couplers. My Dad had cars with both types of couplers in his collection.

Once I got Dad’s set running, I found a Marx car on eBay that I absolutely had to have–an operating Missouri Pacific cattle car. Marx used its own couplers. So how to get both types of Dad’s cars, plus my new Marx car operating together on the same train?

Enter the conversion car.A conversion car is just a car with two types of coupler on each end. I went to Marty’s Model Railroads in Affton to get mine made. Ideally, I’d have done a Marx-to-knuckle conversion car and a Marx-to-Scout conversion car. Then I could convert either type to Marx, and if I wanted to convert Scout to knuckle, I could just use the other two conversion cars. But Marty only had one Marx truck, so I got a Marx-to-knuckle and knuckle-to-Scout made. One could also make a makeshift Marx-compatible coupler with a Lionel truck that lacks a coupler but has a rivet hole (such as those used on the back end of some Lionel cabooses) and a wire Marx coupler substitute.

The only thing to say is to not use a collectible car to make your conversion car. There’s so little market demand for Scout cars that you won’t hurt their value of most of them by making them into conversion cars, and the same holds true of most Marxes. I used cars out of Marty’s $10-and-under box. I’ll also add a suggestion Marty made: Use an open car, like a gondola or a hopper, that you can put a load in to weigh it down. I find my conversion cars derail much less when loaded down with some weight. Even just a film cannister filled with pennies is enough to make a difference.

In the 1950s, Lionel’s knuckle coupler design gave the best combination of realism and reliability, but at a higher cost. Marx’s design was reliable and very inexpensive, but didn’t look very realistic. The Scout design looked realistic and was inexpensive, but wasn’t as reliable as either Lionel’s knuckle coupler or Marx’s tilt coupler. Today, the difference in cost of manufacturing is probably negligible, and people aren’t so concerned about cost anymore anyway.

Serious hobbyists prefer the Lionel knuckle couplers, and for the most part that’s all that anyone makes anymore. But if I like a car, I’m going to buy it, regardless of the coupler, and I want to be able to use basically whatever combination of rolling stock I like.

I’m not sure what that makes me, but conversion cars let me do it, and cheaply.

Troubleshooting Marx remote turnouts

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , , , , , , ,

Yesterday I hooked up Dad’s old Marx O27 remote turnouts, and again found one of them dodgy.
I can’t find any troubleshooting information about Marx O gauge switches online. I went to the library and checked out all the toy train repair books I could find. Nothing. One of Ray L. Plummer’s books offered advice on repairing Lionel turnouts. But the Marx turnouts are slightly different. Emboldened, I set off on my own.

Before you destroy what little collector value your switches have (The words “switch” and “turnout” are often used interchangeably; forgive me if I try to feed Google to get more traffic), let me tell you how to test them first. All you need your turnout(s) (don’t connect them–just keep them loose), two pieces of wire, and a transformer. I used a 25-watt Marx transformer from an entry-level train set I bought off eBay for $20. This eliminates the control panel, track, and everything else from the equation. Of course, you should use a transformer that you already know to be in working order.

Some transformers have posts for both trains and accessories. Some (like the one I used) don’t. Don’t worry about it; we’ll just use the train posts for this exercise.

Don’t plug the transformer in yet. Run a wire from the center post of the turnout (sometimes labeled “B” or “black,” although not on Dad’s) to one of the posts on your transformer. Connect another wire to the other post, but leave the other end loose.

Now, before you plug in your transformer, please keep in mind that you’re working with electricity and use common sense. Keep your hands dry, don’t do this if you’re bleeding, etc. I’m not responsible for what happens next, OK? If you’ve never done anything like this before, take it to a hobby shop and let a pro handle it–a switch that will cost you $15 on eBay in working order isn’t worth personal injury. Or you can buy a new Lionel or K-Line switch from the local hobby shop for $30-$35. Yes, a 50-year-old Marx turnout is worth less than a new one from Lionel or K-Line. That’s the way it goes sometimes.

Got all that? Good. Still with me? Great. Plug in the transformer. Turn it on. Switches like to run at 16-20 volts AC, so crank the transformer’s lever to full speed. Touch the loose wire to either of the outer posts on the switch. Then pick it up and touch it to the other one. Alternate between the two a few times.

If the accessory is still in working order, the track should change positions based on which post you touched the wire to. If it doesn’t, there’s probably a loose or frayed wire somewhere inside.

If the switch works this way but not when you connect the Marx control panel, your control panel is dodgy. I read on The All-Gauge Model Railroading Page that Atlas controllers for their HO turnouts work fine with Marx O27 turnouts. I also read in the same place that Lionel and K-Line controllers will not.

You can also pick up a Marx control panel on eBay. I saw one sell for $5 this past weekend.

Or if you’re handy with wiring, you ought to be able to fashion your own with a couple of push buttons or momentary switches from your local Radio Shack or equivalent–just make sure whatever switches you buy can handle 20-24 volts of current. (Always over-engineer on this kind of stuff.) If you want to go this route and you’ve never done any model railroading wiring before, pick up one of the books on wiring Lionel/Marx/American Flyer layouts–many hobby shops, larger bookstores, and even a lot of libraries have them–and follow its precautions. I’m not responsible for whatever happens if you go this route.

How do you fix a Marx control panel? It’s held shut by four rivets, so opening it for cleaning isn’t an easy endeavor. I fixed my dodgy control panel by blasting some Radio Shack TV tuner cleaner ($9 for a big can) into the openings, then flipping the unit over a few times to get it circulating, then working all four of the buttons. Seeing as the switch is little more than a couple of handfuls of contact points, there’s a decent chance that’ll take care of you. There really isn’t much inside there that can go wrong.

If TV tuner cleaner doesn’t help, it’s probably corrosion. You can open it up and clean any and all electrical contacts with a piece of 600-grit sandpaper, or fashion replacements from some conductive material (copper foil would be best, but aluminum would work). But you’re on your own from here.

If the switch doesn’t work, period, there’s probably a loose or frayed wire somewhere inside. Fortunately, there are only five wires inside.

Opening the switch’s case is a bit of a chore. It’s held shut by two rivets, easily found by flipping the turnout over and looking for indentations. Disconnect the outside wires and power off your transformer (of course). The proper tool to remove rivets isn’t exactly a household item (at least not in mine), so you can do what I did: Pinch the edges of each rivet with a pair of needle-nose pliers until it pushes through the case. The bottom should then come right off. You’ll notice three screws inside. There should be a wire connected to each. Overzealous loosening of the nuts on the top of the case followed by some jostling can loosen those wires. Tighten the screws (if they’re severely corroded, you might consider replacing them). If any of the wires appear frayed, replace them, or have someone handy with a soldering iron replace them.

If you find wires detached from screws and want to keep it from happening again, you can solder the wires to the screws, but this is probably overkill.

The small box on the top of the switch is held in place by six or so tabs on the bottom of the unit. This houses the electromagnet. You can gain access by gently bending the tabs with a small slotted screwdriver. Check to make sure those three wires are still soldered in place. The biggest place for something to go wrong on a Marx turnout is over by those screws it uses for terminals, however, so chances are there’s nothing wrong over in the electromagnet’s neighborhood.

Closing up shop can be as easy or difficult as you like. Since I don’t care about collector value on a pair of switches that might fetch $25, tops, on eBay, I replaced the rivets with a pair of very thin and short machine screws. If you care about collector value, procure a pair of small brass rivets to replace the two you just ruined.

A more permanent home for Dad’s Lionel

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , , , , , , , ,

Gatermann and I spent the afternoon building a train table. I started building one about a month ago but got too busy to finish it. Today was the day I’d set aside to get some work done on it.

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