Oh? Ring of Fire? I didn't know that. Now time to find my first N-Scale logo and try that experiment!
A "ring of fire" involves the motor commutator and is caused by brush material and dirt building up in the gaps between the commutator plates. The material then gets flung out and dragged out of the gaps by the brushes and is set on fire by current and sparks. It appears as a ring as it burns while the commutator is spinning. It is much more likely to happen with soft brushes. Doug
Wow, that set brings back a lot of memories. My exact first train set. I still have the engine and cars, all well worn. Cowman
The locomotive is stored away. I'll get it out and see what the drivers look like. That darn Lionel. You'd think they could at least make something that'd last 93 years without decay, right?
My first train set was a tyco set. I think it came with the GP20 BN loco but can't be 100%. I do know it was a narrow hood BN though.
My first was Tyco ATSF C430 and 5 cars. Dairymens reefer, NH box car, Virginian hopper, TOFC set, and dumping log car. My second set (few years later) was Tyco Penn Central F9s with 5 cars. Also received Ajax covered hopper as stocking stuffer (Mom LOVED that car !!!) Next was an AHM NW Bicentennial GP18. VERY cool because all 3 roads ran in my area. To complete that theme, I would have needed ICG/GM&O, CRI&P, EJ&E, and MILW. Joliet was quite busy back then !!!
Lone Star Treble O. They were sold by JC Penny, only by Catalogue as I recall. I repainted mine for the SP. STILL HAVE a couple old boxes.
Tyco Bicentennial Spirit of '76 HO. I still have it. I have not set it up since I was kid. A year or two later, as a 12-something-year-old, I stumbled across a box of random N scale at a yard sale and didn't look back. I still have the rolling stock from that yard-sale set. The years were not kind to the vintage locomotives and they have been replaced.
Myself, I would never try to operate that locomotive. Doing so could start those wheels final disintegration. Display only.
Agreed. I also found a 251E and wouldn't attempt anything with it either. Made between 1925 and 1932, this one is in pretty rough shape. These are not valuable.
Back in about 1986, I was introduced to an elderly lady who had a pre WWII #1 scale train set with the electric boxcab and three passenger cars. The wheels on the locomotive were all cracked and crumbling. She was wondering if it could be restored. The old guy who ran my favorite train store in Houston had quite an extensive parts selection for old Lionel. He found the correct wheels and pressed them on the steel gear axles for me. New brushes and it ran like a bat out of he11. The husband of the old gal owned a bank and she thought it would be a great idea to run the train on a Christmas display in the bank lobby. She had me build a display table out of a 4X8 sheet of plywood raised about two feet off the floor on a 2X4 frame. I covered the plywood with a few rolls of paper grass mat and framed it all with some wood edge molding. Attached an oval of track and plopped a scale model of the old Southern Pacific depot that I had slapped together out of foam core paper board and hot glue. Set it up and plugged it in at the bank lobby and let er rip. Dang it was loud. The plywood seemed to amplify the noise. The marble floor in the lobby did not help. But the old bank owner and his wife were overjoyed. All the tellers and bank officers just glared at me. If you left the transformer out and expected bank visitors to run it, they were likely to just leave it going. I quickly dashed home and picked up a few things. I came back, isolated a section of the center rail just past the depot and wired it to a momentary push button with a sign that said "Push here to run the train." The locomotive would come to a stop on top of the dead track. Holding the button in for just a moment was enough to get it rolling to live track and around the train went till it stopped at the depot again. Only issue was if some little eager train buff showed up with their parents and just held the button down. It all worked out in the end. I wish I could find my photos of it all but only have this one of the depot that I made shown with some of my O27 Marx.
Was that a steam locomotive? In 1976 I got a Bicentennial steam locomotive, although I don't know who made it. It never ran very well unfortunately.
I think but I'm not 100 percent sure that the loco that came with the Tyco set was an Alco diesel with a freelance paint scheme. Around the same time Athearn did the real 1776, the Seaboard Coast Line diesel that started it all on the prototype... complete with a rather incorrect blue.
Lionel too produced HO Bi-Centennial train sets, one diesel and one with GS-4 4449. Someone made the set for Lionel, not Bachmann, but of similar build.
The following Christmas (1963), I got this on which to put my Treble-O-Lectric trains. Well, not this exact one, which I bought from a guy on the west coast a few years ago but, just like it (my original one is pictured in my avatar). He didn't want to ship it but I old him I would pay whatever it cost to do so. I also told him to take it to a UPS store and they would pack it for him and everything, which he did. I got the Baldwin 0-8-0 and Gulliver County buildings that year, too. Doug
Oh wow, Doug. That is SO cool. It's another picture that I studied for quite some time. So, was that layout a catalogued Treble-O-Lectric item or was it produced by someone else for OOO and N?
It was cataloged for two years, 1963 - 1964, in the Montgomery Ward Christmas catalogs and made by Life-Like. You could buy just the board, which included accessories and track to complement the train sets or get the combination, which included the board, trains, buildings, and accessories. This was only available through Montgomery Ward. Lone Star, themselves, had different layouts they sold, which were vacuum-formed styrene-type plastic and actually, the smaller, single-level layout shown in the Wards catalog was the same as one of the ones from Lone Star. The catalog pages are all shown on my site on the "Treble-O-Lectric Documents" page. Doug
