The DisFort's Chit Chat Cafe

[Sjm9911]

Ed , lionel was bore in my backyard. The town over from where I grew up, and the town my parents were raised in. So most all of thier stuff is native to me. All names, were towns around me. Then to add insult to injury, marx duplicated the stuff. And then there was cobbler, that faked both of them but was also 2 blocks down from the lionel factory. So its hard to limit oneself as everything is conected! I have my families first set feom the 1950s, from the lionel hillside factory( it spaned irvington nj also) so limiting is hard!

 

[bama_ed]

Ed , lionel was bore in my backyard. The town over from where I grew up, and the town my parents were raised in. So most all of thier stuff is native to me. All names, were towns around me. Then to add insult to injury, marx duplicated the stuff. And then there was cobbler, that faked both of them but was also 2 blocks down from the lionel factory. So its hard to limit oneself as everything is conected! I have my families first set feom the 1950s, from the lionel hillside factory( it spaned irvington nj also) so limiting is hard!

Ok family first train set is "protected".

But LIONEL is a "brand". Not a road name. "New Jersey Central" (made up) is a road name for those reading along and not familiar with this discussion. If you want NJC then max it out. If it's not NJC, unload it.

There still needs to be limits. Choose some lines to MAX out the collection of and jettison any others. That's what I'm doing. Max out lines with (colorful locos/box cars/reefers/cabooses) rolling stock. Fill in gaps that you want and get rid of the other lines that you don't care about filling in. I don't need a Pennsylvania RR boxcar; but I would love a Carnation Milk (logo) box car. Road name isn't as important to me as a colorful logo or brand is (Schlitz beer reefer).

I'm not collecting any Union Pacific unless its the only specimen of its type (for example). If I can't get it in a Southern RR, may have to go to a plan B.

Ed

 

[Sjm9911]

Lionel baised its cars on the surounding towns, some of them may be familiar to you, madison cars are baised of a town madison. Other cars lionel produced had manes like, hillside, maplewood, irvinton, Chatman, etc. These were all towns suround mine. So familiarity. Its not just main lines through the state, its towns I grew up in, toon the train in, dated in, fought in , etc. Just think if every town around you had a toy train in the 1959s. Weird, but cool. No one else can say that. While people on the west coast bought lionel irvington trains, they never wnet there. Or saw it. So , yea, I got to have them all , like pokeman.

 

[Sjm9911]

Lionel baised its cars on the surounding towns, some of them may be familiar to you, madison cars are baised of a town madison. Other cars lionel produced had manes like, hillside, maplewood, irvinton, Chatman, etc. These were all towns that suround mine. So familiarity. Its not just main lines through the state, its towns I grew up in, took the train in, dated in, fought in , etc. Just think if every town around you had a toy train in the 1950s. Weird, but cool. No one else can say that. While people on the west coast bought lionel irvington trains, they never wnet there. Or saw it. So , yea, I got to have them all , like pokeman.

 

[Sjm9911]

These new add are really screwing up my posts. When I post and afterwards. Sorry for that. It was an edit.

 

[bama_ed]

Lionel baised its cars on the surounding towns, some of them may be familiar to you, madison cars are baised of a town madison. Other cars lionel produced had manes like, hillside, maplewood, irvinton, Chatman, etc. These were all towns suround mine. So familiarity. Its not just main lines through the state, its towns I grew up in, toon the train in, dated in, fought in , etc. Just think if every town around you had a toy train in the 1959s. Weird, but cool. No one else can say that. While people on the west coast bought lionel irvington trains, they never wnet there. Or saw it. So , yea, I got to have them all , like pokeman.

Okay. Then you either collect them all (all types freight, passenger, loco) or live with road names that have gaps. Or choose road names to collect and fill in gaps and jettison the rest. That's where I am. Not enough space and too much "want". Have to pick the survivors and send the rest to new homes.

Ed

PS - any G scale stock has a home with me, ya know...

 

[Sjm9911]

Its also about mechanicals, so I need the 1935 version and the the 1948 version. Lionel and such has been around for 70 plus years. For me taking that peice of history and making it run again is crazy. I fix it and it runs like it did off the assembly line new. But its 70, 80, 90 years old. Plus the electronics they had then. I can just imagine as a kid looking upon a teain as I didn when atari came out in 78 or 79. So its the regional thing, but so much more. I cant explain it. It just is. Compared to technology today its a blip, but way back when, it was state of the art.

 

[Sjm9911]

And for that matter I cant fix a microwave or a vacume, but I can get a 1948 train rewired and good as new running on a track. So that says something about me or the way the world is going.

 

[Stratman50th]

Loving this guy's! My lines are all B&O, C&O, and Chessie as that's where I grew up. On the other side is the Christmas trains. I collected the Lionel Christmas rolling stock, each release for 10 or 12 years. I didn't have a dedicated Christmas Loco so I used that Disneyland General for the Christmas consist. Sadly now too many cars for that little guy to pull. Need to get another locomotive that's Christmas themed to pull them. I also have a really nice Lionel Department 56 set. Another one they suck you into buying a piece of rolling stock every year. The Loco for that set looks to be a scale Hudson. That will require a lookup to verify. I'm jealous of you guys' layouts! But excited to see them at the same time. As we discussed in a previous post, I need a place to build a nice layout. The garage is huge, but everything has to pack or fold to accommodate a really big vehicle being moved around. I'll figure it out. In the meantime I'll live vicariously through you guys!

 

[jbrostek]

I got nothing on the model RR stuff. I never got into it. however, I have helped a friend automate his with a rasberry pi based controller. I just got the OS/network/app software setup for him, he figured out all the control modules, wiring and control programming.

Last night did not get much decorating done. However, hoping today and tomorrow I can get a lot of it done despite the colder weather.

 

[Sjm9911]

I got nothing on the model RR stuff. I never got into it. however, I have helped a friend automate his with a rasberry pi based controller. I just got the OS/network/app software setup for him, he figured out all the control modules, wiring and control programming.

Last night did not get much decorating done. However, hoping today and tomorrow I can get a lot of it done despite the colder weather.

Thats why I did mine early, is 31 outsode now. The week bwfore thanksgiving it was 70. As I get older I get wiser.......lol. hope it warms up some for you.

 

[bama_ed]

Loving this guy's! My lines are all B&O, C&O, and Chessie as that's where I grew up.

I see both your point, @Stratman50th , and also @Sjm9911 . A local geographical relationship is meaningful. That's why I particularly like Southern Railway stuff (notice I didn't say Norfolk Southern) and steam locos too.

I would add, also, that I also collect lines/road names that I have ridden as a tourist line which thus have (recent) memories attached to them.

An example is the East Broad Top (EBT) narrow gauge, short line in Pennsylvania. Rode it twice 20 years apart +/- and it is in the middle of nowhere (which is why it survived) running coal and some freight up to the Pennsy mainline a few miles away. I have a Bachmann EBT loco and passenger cars (although they ran passenger service only occasionally). The loco is not historically accurate (not the correct wheel alignment) - Bachmann must have slapped the EBT logo on a loco they already were producing and a sap like me bought it. Just being honest here.

Another example is the two tourist lines DW and I rode in Colorado and New Mexico the last few years: The Durango & Silverton Railroad and the Cumbres & Toltec Railroad. Both are narrow gauge railroads that once were part of the Denver & Rio Grand West (D&RGW). So when I have the opportunity to add D&RGW to the collection (motive power, rolling stock), I choose to do so. Again, not always historically accurate but it does lean on the wonderful memories we have of those excursions.

It sounds to me like Spencer had the opportunity to play with trains when he was younger (?) but I came into this hobby as an adult (of model trains) so I am trying to make up for lost time.

Ed

PS - Don, we have to work out a solution in your garage so you can run a layout when you want to.

 

[Sjm9911]

We had a chrismass piece of green plywood in the basement my dad set up every year. That stiped when my parents divorced. I found a train in a home removation and remembered the childhood train and started collecting a few. Later, my oldest brother gave me our familly train set, I never knew he had it. So, In all its glory........and look at that price. I am sure it was refuced since the story goes they went right to the hillside factory to get it. ( that was where lionel was HQ, between hillside and irvington, the next town over from us. And it turns out a lot of older people I worked with parents worked for lionel. Its was a big regional thing.

 

[bama_ed]

So what's that price in the picture?

$1,889?
$18.89?

 

[MrsPAHunter]

Funny how everything we start on grows into something much bigger than intended: small collection of trains - into overflowing basement shelves, just update a pin board - major home renovations, let someone winterize the RV - end up replacing all the lines through the recently installed waterpump, and plan to take the RV for a ride around the block - discover probably need to replace at least the engine batteries if not the house batteries, too.

Speaking of which...anyone care to coach me on where to acquire RV engine (and house?) batteries? And then reassure me that I can do this myself??? I'm off work this Friday starting mid-morning...if anyone cares to call/email. Have to be able to drive it 15 miles down the road late December...to get the shop to replace the slide lock rubber boot that's been leaking rainwater into the rig for the past 18 months on occasion and maybe the original 2008 slide topper.

All that said, Thanksgiving quiet with 11 lb turkey for just Mom and me - plenty of leftovers. Followed by a rather lazy weekend --- emptied only about 4 boxes in the garage, picked through a few Christmas boxes to purge too many Hallmark ornaments, and took 30 minutes to put up some Christmas lights:

And really appreciate bama_ed's suggestion on where to offload some trains (my 1 paper box of childhood trains, PAHunter's small collection - compared to everything else he collected in a big way.) Someday I'll get through all those boxes and can finally park the Jeep in the garage with the lawn mower! That might be my retirement project...between RV road trips across North America.

Gotta head off now...Reba crying for 'last call' walk of the night, then, bedtime.

 

[Sjm9911]

So what's that price in the picture?

$1,889?
$18.89?

18.89 in 1950 $1889 today.

 

[Sjm9911]

Funny how everything we start on grows into something much bigger than intended: small collection of trains - into overflowing basement shelves, just update a pin board - major home renovations, let someone winterize the RV - end up replacing all the lines through the recently installed waterpump, and plan to take the RV for a ride around the block - discover probably need to replace at least the engine batteries if not the house batteries, too.

Speaking of which...anyone care to coach me on where to acquire RV engine (and house?) batteries? And then reassure me that I can do this myself??? I'm off work this Friday starting mid-morning...if anyone cares to call/email. Have to be able to drive it 15 miles down the road late December...to get the shop to replace the slide lock rubber boot that's been leaking rainwater into the rig for the past 18 months on occasion and maybe the original 2008 slide topper.

All that said, Thanksgiving quiet with 11 lb turkey for just Mom and me - plenty of leftovers. Followed by a rather lazy weekend --- emptied only about 4 boxes in the garage, picked through a few Christmas boxes to purge too many Hallmark ornaments, and took 30 minutes to put up some Christmas lights:View attachment 814288View attachment 814292

And really appreciate bama_ed's suggestion on where to offload some trains (my 1 paper box of childhood trains, PAHunter's small collection - compared to everything else he collected in a big way.) Someday I'll get through all those boxes and can finally park the Jeep in the garage with the lawn mower! That might be my retirement project...between RV road trips across North America.

Gotta head off now...Reba crying for 'last call' walk of the night, then, bedtime.

Someone better them me can guide on the batteries, but its not hard to replace them, they are just heavy. But you are strong. Just take you your time. Your house decore looks great. And I am glad you had thanksgiving woth mom. We did also, small but warming. Hope to see you soon!

 

[Teamubr]

This shouldn't come as a surprise to many of you, but I have the full Cardinals Baseball train. It's in HO scale. I played with some HO stuff when I was a kid, but never got back into it.



j

 

[FtW Mike]

Funny how everything we start on grows into something much bigger than intended: small collection of trains - into overflowing basement shelves, just update a pin board - major home renovations, let someone winterize the RV - end up replacing all the lines through the recently installed waterpump, and plan to take the RV for a ride around the block - discover probably need to replace at least the engine batteries if not the house batteries, too.

Speaking of which...anyone care to coach me on where to acquire RV engine (and house?) batteries? And then reassure me that I can do this myself??? I'm off work this Friday starting mid-morning...if anyone cares to call/email. Have to be able to drive it 15 miles down the road late December...to get the shop to replace the slide lock rubber boot that's been leaking rainwater into the rig for the past 18 months on occasion and maybe the original 2008 slide topper.

All that said, Thanksgiving quiet with 11 lb turkey for just Mom and me - plenty of leftovers. Followed by a rather lazy weekend --- emptied only about 4 boxes in the garage, picked through a few Christmas boxes to purge too many Hallmark ornaments, and took 30 minutes to put up some Christmas lights:View attachment 814288View attachment 814292

And really appreciate bama_ed's suggestion on where to offload some trains (my 1 paper box of childhood trains, PAHunter's small collection - compared to everything else he collected in a big way.) Someday I'll get through all those boxes and can finally park the Jeep in the garage with the lawn mower! That might be my retirement project...between RV road trips across North America.

Gotta head off now...Reba crying for 'last call' walk of the night, then, bedtime.

Jen, You go Girl. PASCO has the batteries you need as well as AUTO ZONE. Just make sure you take a bunch of pictures before you do anything with them so you have a a good reference when you put the replacements in.

 

[jbrostek]

@Sjm9911 I wanted to, and usually do, however, I had a lot of interior work to complete and decorating will have to wait. It will be back to mid 50s tomorrow which is perfect weather to get my lights all set up. Cant do the trees till Saturday once the carpet cleaners are done.

@MrsPAHunter It is a two part thing, the coach batteries are probably getting long in the tooth. I forget the date on them. They don't like sitting no matter what, so having a battery tender on them always helps. That is what the little box I gave you is meant to do, use the house battery charger to maintain the coach batteries. As for who will have them, you have options including batteries plus since I am pretty sure the house batteries are GC2 6v, and the coach are a pair of 1200cca or higher 12v batteries. Changing them is not hard, they are just super heavy. A call/txt will head your way.