Lionel Prewar-O Photo Gallery

Post by **paulrace** » Sat Apr 11, 2015 5:32 am

Paul, glad you got it working again. Sometimes the cheapest ones are the hardest to find working because they fell apart or were considered disposable. - Other Paul

winced36 · Post by **winced36** » Mon Apr 13, 2015 4:48 pm

Sometimes the low-end Lionel sets are in extraordinarily good shape...despite the lesser quality it seems they were well taken care of by their young owners. Receiving a Lionel or Flyer set at the low-point of the Great Depression must have been a real rare treat, and the parents probably let them know it. We have a ninety-one year-old friend who still sets up his small Lionel set that he received as a boy every Christmas. It is pristine...

Paul

winced36 · Post by **winced36** » Tue May 05, 2015 4:47 pm

A recent York find...an example of the last version of the 2654 O-gauge tank car manufactured by Lionel before WWII. Blackened dome, handrails, ladders, journals, wheels and gray paint:

Looked for one of these for a long time and finally stumbled onto one. The decals are tough, but good enough for me until I find better.

Paul

Post by **paulrace** » Tue May 05, 2015 7:19 pm

Whoa! Nice find!

winced36 · Post by **winced36** » Tue May 19, 2015 7:42 am

Here's a Lionel 248 that I picked up a few years ago. Someone had done a great job repainting it in the Stephen Girard scheme, similar to the standard gauge 9E:

Later I found a couple of early Lionel passenger coach bodies on eBay that someone had stripped and soldered together. Using Charles Wood colors, a sheet of self-adhesive decals and new wheel-sets, was able to create a couple of coaches. The Wood colors are slightly off, but close.

What do ya think?

Paul

Post by **paulrace** » Wed May 20, 2015 5:33 am

Very clever use of those coach bodies. The color difference doesn't bother me as much as it probably should, since most of my "tinplate" trains were postwar plastic, and the colors varied from batch to batch.

winced36 · Post by **winced36** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 4:43 pm

winced36 wrote:Lionel 1681 locomotive, tender and cars from the early 1930's:

This was pretty close to the bottom of the food-chain for Lionel during the depression, putting aside the Mickey Mouse hand-cars and the Winner line. The loco here was a fifty-cent yard sale find...needed some work but it's back among the living...

Paul

The 1681 also came in sets with a 1690 coach and a 1691 observation:

: Lionel Jr passenger set; Lionel Jr set.jpg (196.31 KiB) Viewed 33252 times

There was also a 1661 locomotive in black which is sharp, sold both as Lionel and Ives. These locomotives are tough to find in decent shape.

Paul

Post by **paulrace** » Thu Jun 18, 2015 8:25 pm

Paul, I'm glad you got it going. They were solid little guys, better made mechanically than a lot of trains today.

winced36 · Post by **winced36** » Wed Jul 08, 2015 6:17 pm

I'm not a box guy, but sometimes it's nice to get one:

: Lionel 803 with box; Lionel 803 and box.jpg (210.44 KiB) Viewed 33252 times

An early Lionel 803 four-wheel hopper. A recent online-auction purchase, it's a bit more scratched-up than I'd hoped. The box is probably in better shape than the car...

Paul