Here's a project recovered from the basement of my grandparents' house a few years back, a Flyer 3326 that belonged to my uncle:



This is why toy trains should never be stored in a musty damp basement. This is in very rough shape, with flaking paint and quite a bit of corrosion on some of the plated parts. The real problem is the wheelsets are all swollen and crumbling, as are the gears. An effort to disassemble the motor may see it fall to pieces in my hands.

I was going to gut it for parts and pitch the rest, but, given the family history, I don't think I could stomach doing that. Instead, I think a bottoms up rebuild will be attempted. A York friend sells reconditioned motors, so I may see if he has this one...that would be far easier (and likely less expensive) than trying to re-wheel it and recondition it myself. The boiler casting and trim seems in decent enough shape, and the drive rods and eccentric gear may polish up satisfactorily. The pilot and pony trucks will likely be problematic.

I don't know. It's going into the project pile along with the rest of the set. Stay tuned...

Flyer 416 crane car from shortly before the war:



Picked this up from a friend of mine down in Virginia; sending it on to a friend of mine in Missouri. It's a nice piece, pretty rare, especially in such nice shape.

I picked up a replacement motor at York for my uncle's Flyer locomotive, one refurbished by Dave Johnston:



Another project for this winter. One might think this should be simple, but it never is ; I had begun thinking I might just part this thing out, but the family connection is too great.

A sampling of American Flyer prewar-O tank cars:



Love tank cars...

This little Flyer 1120 "Seattle" coach turned up recently looking rather forlorn. Someone had apparently tried to electrify it as some point, and the roof had numerous small dents in it. We straightened up the body as best we could, then gave it a bath in soap and water. After stripping the roof, we used a bit of Squadron Green Putty to fill the dents. We let it sit for a couple days, then sanded the roof-top as best we could with some fine grit sandpaper. Finished up with a coat of flat black enamel and a shot of clear satin lacquer:



It'll never pass for mint, but decent enough I think.

Here's a shot of my grandfather's Flyer 1102 "Suburban" set (after undergoing a bit of refurbishment), along with a scan of the 1927 Flyer catalog:



Interestingly, the 1926 catalog pictures the "Suburban" including "Seattle" 1120 coaches, while the 1927 catalog shows a more generic scheme. However, the locomotive's trim definitely matches the 1927 illustration, not that of the 1926 catalog where the trim was a bit more elaborate.

This thing had been stored in a damp basement for an unknown period of time, only to be found when the house was completely emptied a few years ago. There was quite a bit of corrosion damage, especially to the roofs of the coaches. We had to run those through the bead-blaster to get them cleaned up before a respray of satin black enamel. Other surface corrosion, especially on the lithography, was lightly sanded.

The 1096, despite quite a bit of work, remains a project in-process. For now, it will not run when AC power is applied (it will run using DC). There are no modifications to the motor that would convert it to DC-only operation. Not sure what's going on. The factory maintenance instructions warn against getting any lubricant on the commutator, but that has been thoroughly cleaned and new brushes installed. So a bit of an enigma at the moment; however, if there's one loco on the roster we definitely want to get back into good operating condition, this is it. More work to be done.

I took some time this past week to start making a few storage boxes for sets that I have for which there is no shelf space. Until I can make some more shelf-display space, this stuff is going to have to live in boxes with occasional trips to the layout.

I started off with the 1939 Flyer sets 301 (right) and 305 (left):



Both from the year of Flyer's "curly-que" coupler experiment, these are nice examples of some of the last O-gauge production by the company as their new 3/16-gauge stuff began to dominate production and sales. I'd been searching for a nice complete 420 locomotive and lucked out, this one coming as part of its original set (305). Thanks to Ray Ellen over at Vienna Station for running it down for me.

If nothing else, this exercise has driven home the notion that I really have enough stuff!