Weekend Photos - September 2021

All Facets of O-Gauge, 3-Rail, Model Railroading
User avatar
webenda
Posts: 14664
Joined: Sun Jan 09, 2005 4:05 pm
Location: Columbia

Re: Weekend Photos - September 2021

Postby webenda » Tue Sep 14, 2021 6:40 pm

Image
----Wayne----

Back when I was growing up, if you didn't start someth'n, there wouldn't be noth'n.
--Merle Haggard

User avatar
healey36
Posts: 6352
Joined: Fri Sep 03, 2010 3:43 pm
Location: Westminster, MD

Re: Weekend Photos - September 2021

Postby healey36 » Tue Sep 14, 2021 9:06 pm

Don’t you hate when that happens?

I’ve heard the 1666 is a prodigious smoker; I’ve also heard that there was a smoking version that not only smoked from the stack, but also from underneath to simulate steam venting. The only Marx loco I have is a 999 which has no smoke.

User avatar
healey36
Posts: 6352
Joined: Fri Sep 03, 2010 3:43 pm
Location: Westminster, MD

Re: Weekend Photos - September 2021

Postby healey36 » Thu Sep 16, 2021 12:16 pm

This guy wandered over to the station project for a look:

Image

He seems a bit disgusted at the lack of progress (or it could be that he found himself standing in a puddle of crystalized super-glue, which looks an awful lot like pigeon droppings).

HONDO74
Posts: 9012
Joined: Fri Mar 03, 2006 1:55 pm
Location: Midway USA

Re: Weekend Photos - September 2021

Postby HONDO74 » Thu Sep 16, 2021 3:30 pm

healey36 wrote:Don’t you hate when that happens?

I’ve heard the 1666 is a prodigious smoker; I’ve also heard that there was a smoking version that not only smoked from the stack, but also from underneath to simulate steam venting. The only Marx loco I have is a 999 which has no smoke.


Maybe you are thinking of the postwar 2026.

User avatar
healey36
Posts: 6352
Joined: Fri Sep 03, 2010 3:43 pm
Location: Westminster, MD

Re: Weekend Photos - September 2021

Postby healey36 » Fri Sep 17, 2021 9:54 am

The Old Man had a postwar Lionel 2026, the first version which appeared in 1946. The boiler on that version was similar to the prewar 1666 (a version of which was also sold in 1946 with only minor cosmetic changes from the prewar version). The 2026 had wire hand-rails, an eccentric crank, and nickel-rimmed drivers. Neither the Lionel 2026 or the 1666 had smoke, at least not the versions he had. Later, around 1951, they changed the boiler casting used on the 2026 to the less detailed one used on the 2016, 2018, 2029, 2036, 2037, and the O-gauge 637. The later version of the 2026 may have had smoke, but I'm not sure.

Wayne's loco, however, is definitely a Marx 1666, a locomotive that came in a number of variations. Marx fans claim that the smoke-producing version is the vapor champ of the postwar era. My childhood Flyer S-gauge could pump out some considerable clouds, so I'm not sure I'd grant Marx the title outright. However, Flyer gear smoke production seemed to diminish pretty rapidly over time as the units got clogged and/or crusty, and repairing them (new filament and packing) is a pain. I've done it a couple of times and it's a fiddly exercise.

A version of the smoking Marx 1666 includes a downdraft feature that simulates steam exhaust, as well as smoke that is pushed up through the stack. I don't know of any other manufacturer that had this during the postwar era. Here's a video I found on Youtube of a Marx 1666 at work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VOW3kd0cn0

User avatar
healey36
Posts: 6352
Joined: Fri Sep 03, 2010 3:43 pm
Location: Westminster, MD

Re: Weekend Photos - September 2021

Postby healey36 » Mon Sep 20, 2021 3:02 pm

Found a nice prewar Flyer no. 2005 "Triangle Light" signal, new in 1936:

Image

Found this on Ray Ellen's Vienna Station list for September. I'd been looking for a 2005 for quite awhile, and this one is in really great shape. Even has the original track clip. One of the last new accessories introduced by Chicago American Flyer before the Gilbert Company took over in late 1937.

Changing which light is lit is a done manually with the lever sticking out from the back. I guess you could connect it to an insulated section to turn it on/off, but no way to automate the light selection.

Looks a bit like something out of Doctor Who to me.

User avatar
webenda
Posts: 14664
Joined: Sun Jan 09, 2005 4:05 pm
Location: Columbia

Re: Weekend Photos - September 2021

Postby webenda » Mon Sep 20, 2021 8:14 pm

healey36 wrote:Found a nice prewar Flyer no. 2005 "Triangle Light" signal, new in 1936:


I like that signal. It got me to thinking about how the price of hobbies has gone up.


Something you could buy for $1.00 in 1950.
Image

Something you could buy for $1,795 in 1958.
Image

What you can buy for $2,999.99 today.
Image
----Wayne----

Back when I was growing up, if you didn't start someth'n, there wouldn't be noth'n.
--Merle Haggard

Rufus T. Firefly
Posts: 41330
Joined: Wed May 16, 2007 6:52 am
Location: Departed from this forum

Re: Weekend Photos - September 2021

Postby Rufus T. Firefly » Tue Sep 21, 2021 7:01 am

healey36 wrote:Looks a bit like something out of Doctor Who to me.


Yes, it does have that styling, :D
Conservatism: The intense fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is inferior is being treated as your equal.

User avatar
healey36
Posts: 6352
Joined: Fri Sep 03, 2010 3:43 pm
Location: Westminster, MD

Re: Weekend Photos - September 2021

Postby healey36 » Tue Sep 21, 2021 7:30 am

It's something I think about quite a bit, trying to rationalize product pricing and the buying public's "acceptance" of it. Some of it is simply the endless mark of inflation (the expansion of the money supply and the resulting devaluation of the currency), but there's also, it seems to me, a heavy influence of tech and innovation together with the shift in manufacturing (both in terms of automation and location). A good example is the epic evolution of electronics from tubes and wires to solid-state circuitry, which had the dual effect of raising quality and reliability while sharply reducing cost over an extended period of time. Perhaps equally important, it allowed for the miniaturization of many items.

For whatever reason, one of the pricing moves that remains stuck in my head was the introduction of the Ford Maverick in 1969. I was 14 years old at the time, and the $1,995 price tag struck me, even then, as notable:

Image

That was the same year that one could buy a Polaroid Swinger for $19.95, another product price-point that remains lodged in my cranium.

I think the late 1960s was perhaps the ebb of whatever was left of the sense of frugality lodged in the American psyche following the Great Depression. The Boomers were starting to get traction as the economic and cultural drivers, and the experience of "stagflation", the disappearance of cheap energy, the exit from Southeast Asia, Watergate, and the evolution of Johnson's "Great Society", the whole mess just pitched us over from a sense of personal responsibility to entitlement. Folks could rationalize expenditures that would have previously been considered laughable.

Economic theory is some fascinating stuff. The complexity of it defies easy answers.

Rufus T. Firefly
Posts: 41330
Joined: Wed May 16, 2007 6:52 am
Location: Departed from this forum

Re: Weekend Photos - September 2021

Postby Rufus T. Firefly » Tue Sep 21, 2021 8:18 am

healey36 wrote:Folks could rationalize expenditures that would have previously been considered laughable.


Coincided with the great shift to making everything disposable combined with programmed obsolescence and failure. Freezers that used to last 30+ years now were built to fail 6 months after their warranty expired. Bottles, can, and packing all went off to the dump.

Economic theory is some fascinating stuff. The complexity of it defies easy answers.


Too much of it defies comprehension or even application to reality and the human condition.
Conservatism: The intense fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is inferior is being treated as your equal.

User avatar
healey36
Posts: 6352
Joined: Fri Sep 03, 2010 3:43 pm
Location: Westminster, MD

Re: Weekend Photos - September 2021

Postby healey36 » Tue Sep 21, 2021 8:44 am

Rufus T. Firefly wrote:
Economic theory is some fascinating stuff. The complexity of it defies easy answers.


Too much of it defies comprehension or even application to reality and the human condition.


One frequently hears from the mass-media that "it's different this time", when it fundamentally really isn't.

The bit that has confused me a lot has been the lack of inflation, despite everything that's been done by the last 3-4 administrations and the Federal Reserve that theoretically should have resulted in a substantial inflationary trend. Bernanke's "quantitative easing", a reaction to the 2007-2008 crisis, in and of itself was designed to flood the economy with newly-printed money, yet the inflationary needle, until recently, has barely moved. I think there is something sort of "different" going on that is counter-balancing price-pressures in the marketplace, and that is the introduction of mass-marketing via the internet and retailers such as Walmart and the warehouse outlets such as Costco. Buying/selling in mass quantity by these outlets, either online or in-person has, to great extent I think, held prices down. The collateral damage has been that it has also destroyed much of small-to-mid-sized retail.

v8vega
Posts: 1337
Joined: Wed Apr 21, 2010 11:37 am
Location: Sylmar CA a part of Los Angeles

Re: Weekend Photos - September 2021

Postby v8vega » Tue Sep 21, 2021 9:51 am

Is that true that Big boys cost $3,000

Rufus T. Firefly
Posts: 41330
Joined: Wed May 16, 2007 6:52 am
Location: Departed from this forum

Re: Weekend Photos - September 2021

Postby Rufus T. Firefly » Tue Sep 21, 2021 9:59 am

v8vega wrote:Is that true that Big boys cost $3,000


The one from Kohs is listed at $6,000 and is at least a decade in the process of creation and delivery......in other words, some of the people that ordered it will not be alive by the time it gets delivered.
Conservatism: The intense fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is inferior is being treated as your equal.

User avatar
healey36
Posts: 6352
Joined: Fri Sep 03, 2010 3:43 pm
Location: Westminster, MD

Re: Weekend Photos - September 2021

Postby healey36 » Tue Sep 21, 2021 3:48 pm

Rufus T. Firefly wrote:
v8vega wrote:Is that true that Big boys cost $3,000


The one from Kohs is listed at $6,000 and is at least a decade in the process of creation and delivery......in other words, some of the people that o-rdered it will not be alive by the time it gets delivered.

I see the Legacy 2-8-8-2s listed by Mario's for $1780-$1849, a bargain.
-

User avatar
robert.
Posts: 5879
Joined: Mon Mar 02, 2015 9:24 am

Re: Weekend Photos - September 2021

Postby robert. » Sat Sep 25, 2021 8:24 pm

healey36 wrote:It's something I think about quite a bit, trying to rationalize product pricing and the buying public's "acceptance" of it. Some of it is simply the endless mark of inflation (the expansion of the money supply and the resulting devaluation of the currency), but there's also, it seems to me, a heavy influence of tech and innovation together with the shift in manufacturing (both in terms of automation and location). A good example is the epic evolution of electronics from tubes and wires to solid-state circuitry, which had the dual effect of raising quality and reliability while sharply reducing cost over an extended period of time. Perhaps equally important, it allowed for the miniaturization of many items.

For whatever reason, one of the pricing moves that remains stuck in my head was the introduction of the Ford Maverick in 1969. I was 14 years old at the time, and the $1,995 price tag struck me, even then, as notable:

Image

That was the same year that one could buy a Polaroid Swinger for $19.95, another product price-point that remains lodged in my cranium.

I think the late 1960s was perhaps the ebb of whatever was left of the sense of frugality lodged in the American psyche following the Great Depression. The Boomers were starting to get traction as the economic and cultural drivers, and the experience of "stagflation", the disappearance of cheap energy, the exit from Southeast Asia, Watergate, and the evolution of Johnson's "Great Society", the whole mess just pitched us over from a sense of personal responsibility to entitlement. Folks could rationalize expenditures that would have previously been considered laughable.

Economic theory is some fascinating stuff. The complexity of it defies easy answers.

Most likely as a 14 year old boy. You were hoping to buy the maverick and a polaroid swinger. What would be cooler than? taking photos of naked chicks in the backseat of your own car. For $2015. you were going to give Heffner a run for his money :lol: :lol: :lol:
I spend entirely too many hours a day tying my shoes


Return to “O-Gauge, 3-Rail, Model Railroading”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 12 guests