Anyone have a Lionel 226E 2-6-4 ?

[healey36]

Eight to ten 2800's is impressive. I have a postwar 2046 that will pull about that many if I pair it with a prewar tender. Like you said, they must be well-lubricated to get there.

Dennis, I've admired your repainted/decaled black 654/2654 fleet for awhile. I've got a few clunkers under the work bench; it would be fun to make a few of those.

[Dennis Holler]

Thank you, I need to actually finish those lol I have the Black railings etc just need to get back on them. FYI, I used olf ho scale Walthers and Champ decals on them so that is why they seem to fit pretty good. Some S gauge ones might also fit.




For awhile I was buying up all the junker 654/2654's I could find that were the later decaled versions. Even better are the very last Gray Sunoco ones that have cotter pin handrails.

[Dennis Holler]

You may have found this one, but it's my junker 203 switcher pulling I think 12 cars. Most of the cars are prewar wood kit built with Lionel prewar trucks and couplers installed. They have just the right amount of weight and look great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ-EUzEJ1dI

I was kind of tempted to get the 226E out with a similar string of prewar wood kit cars and see how many it could pull lol Goal would be at least 20.... That would be a sight see lol

[ScaleCraft]

Always thought the weight was to counteract the extended rear of the boiler casting n a 6-wheel motor block.
This one I have stays as is, even with the postwar tender trucks, so I can haul stuff. My 225E and 675/225E conversions have functional front couplers. I think I can six-head them! Plus a couple more.

Got the orphan 225E boilers from Al Cox after he snagged them at TCA meets, stripped them for parts, and sold off the parts.
Fun getting a 675 cylinder chest to fit. Screwholes in different places...well, one is.

And they're all NP.

[Dennis Holler]

Al was a riot. Nice guys and his wife was a sweety. I was fortunate enough to visit his house and rumage through the catacoms a couple of times. besides the Brute and 213, I remember a wall of shleves filled with std guage Blue Comet sets from floor to ceiling lol. He had so much stuff. Wish I had taken some pictures but it was back in about 1990-92.

[healey36]

Not intending to hijack the thread, but what's the plan for the domes? Painting them black as well?

[ScaleCraft]

Al was a riot. Nice guys and his wife was a sweety. I was fortunate enough to visit his house and rumage through the catacoms a couple of times. besides the Brute and 213, I remember a wall of shleves filled with std guage Blue Comet sets from floor to ceiling lol. He had so much stuff. Wish I had taken some pictures but it was back in about 1990-92.

Usually old Al was very careful who he let into the catacombs. Did you know, without any permits, he had the 4-car garage floor removed, dirt dug down and catacombs poured, new lid, and parked his autos right back on top with the catacombs, alarms, and locked steel gates below?
His son John....repairs would come in, his idea of repair often was douching down the inside of the motor block with Weasel Pee (WD-40), and putting it on the test track. If it ran, it got shipped out.
Al would have me do some of the more invasive repairs.
Boy, he had a lot of parts!
I can't even remember the time frame. Had a layout upstairs, had a house fire 36 years ago, rebuilt in the new basement. So it would have bracketed your time there.
On the rise above Richmond Beach, right?
Rules did not apply to Alison Cox.

[v8vega]

I was into HO, a friend in a bar offered to sell me his childhood prewar 0-4-0 set. I started fooling with it and joined TTOS who back then 1983 had Big monthly meets and I began buying and learning.
My interest always has been hi rail scale type layouts so I didn't care for the tin cars that came with my set and sold them for $5. He was very happy.

[Dennis Holler]

Yes, I was stationed in Bremerton from about 88-92 and ended up meeting a guy named Ray Dumpke that worked at the shipyard in Bremerton and happened to be a Lionel dealer. I ended up buying a few trains from him and somehow we got talking and he restored a lot of stuff and we made a deal where I would put in a few hours working for him repairing or restoring all manner of trains. About the only thing he wouldn't let me do was paint lol. Ray had a brother named John that had a hot rod shop in town and we used to go over there to use his bead blaster. After a bit I ended up going to a train show, probably either TCA or one of the other local groups with him. At some point Ray took me with him to deliver a load of restored things and pick up new projects to be worked on. Ray and a few other guys as I understood rebuilt/restored tons of trains for Al. I must have been there before the fire, I don't remember any talk about that and the basement was packed every square inch as you know lol. It was a place a guy could just stay down there for days rummaging to see what could be found. I remember Al wanted Ray to restore some loco and Ray didn't have motors for that particular one and Al pulled out a U Haul sized moving box full of motors and motor blocks and he said some guy had had them at a show sellign em for 50 or 75 bucks each and he said how much for the box and bought the whole thing. Sounded like that type of transaction was a regular activity for Al. I think that location sounds right. It was the same place the TCA quarterly pictures for the Brute and 213 were taken I assume in the early 90's. When I visited those two items were in the glass display cabinate at the end of one of the isles down that row of catacombs. He had a couple of prewar display layouts down there and if I remember a 00 layout that had loops of both two and three rail track. Man there was just so much down there.

[ScaleCraft]

House fire was mine. I was putting it into my own time frame. I remember Ray.
What did you do at Bremerton?
Surface or submerged?

[Dennis Holler]

I was into HO, a friend in a bar offered to sell me his childhood prewar 0-4-0 set. I started fooling with it and joined TTOS who back then 1983 had Big monthly meets and I began buying and learning.
My interest always has been hi rail scale type layouts so I didn't care for the tin cars that came with my set and sold them for $5. He was very happy.

I started with my dad's Marx, he had a 666 and a 999 some cars, some ORange Lionel 085 telegraph posts and a Flyer 596 water tower. Santa brought some Athearn Blue box ho for me in 1972 and an AHM 2-4-0 Bowker for my dad lol. Next year I begged and begged and Santa got me the DT&I Switcher set. Fast forward to the late 70's and while I was more or less building an ho layout on a 4x8 platform my dad built, I rediscovered Lionel and specifically traded a friend of a friend a bunch of plastic models for his dads old beat up trains. Nothing much good except a couple of 2458 PRR autoboxcars and a a really ratty 2555 tanker. I really liked those all metal cars a lot and soon discoved some hobby shops that sold a few old Lionel trains and then discovered a TCA guy within a reasonable distance and starting visiting him and picking up more trains while I was still a kid. It kind of slowed a little bit when I went into the Navy, but once I made it to Bremerton, I found an antique shop that seemed to always be getting some old trains and I started spending all my E4 pay on trains and car parts for my 69 Mustang lol. It really hasn't slowed down much 30 years later lol

[healey36]

I pulled out my copies of William Vagell's 1965 "Train Collector's Encyclopedia - Traintique Edition" and saw a picture of Al Cox and his son John in the "Who's Who in Traintique Collecting" section. If that's the basement, things look neat and tidy in that picture .

I met Vagell once in Baltimore at a meet in Arbutus back in the early 1980s. I was just getting into prewar O-gauge trains, and spent a few minutes talking to him and another guy whose name escapes me. He had been a professional magician by trade.

[ScaleCraft]

I pulled out my copies of William Vagell's 1965 "Train Collector's Encyclopedia - Traintique Edition" and saw a picture of Al Cox and his son John in the "Who's Who in Traintique Collecting" section. If that's the basement, things look neat and tidy in that picture.

Not sure what the picture is of. There was the customer/shop area, glass display case /desk to greet customers and receive/deliver trains. Across from that a tall wood bench away from the wall.
East of that was the Catacombs with wrought iron gate across the doorway. Locked.

Let me try to explain the catacombs. More than a 4-car garage deep. Nearest part actually under the edge of the house.

What, four or maybe five rooms? 15' or 16' square. Imagine a square capital "C". One on one side, one on the other, so the hallway/passageway went between. The opening in the "C"s faced each other on opposite sides of the hallway/passageway with the opening about center in the room. Now, imagine Plexi covered (some) or open shelves, ceiling to floor, on all exposed sides of the "C", makes 7 wall faces per side, or 14 per room.
Every square inch of the shelves on these walls was occupied by rare/vintage/collectible stuff, PLUS it was stacked on the carpet on the floor in boxes or loose. That's not counting what was on display outside the Catacombs, in the main office, front room, nor in all the storage lockers he had.

When Al died and John started selling off all this rare/vintage/collectible sheet, the market tanked.

I'll always remember the 2-rail scale passenger cars on a shelf above the door to the catacombs. Orient Express? Every window had a naked female in it. He was quite proud of those cars.

[Dennis Holler]

That all matches what I remember. I also remember in addition to the front way down and I thought there was a back way down and either up stairs or down that back way was through something that seemed like a back porch or something of the sort. I remember a ton of drawers with cars and parts etc in that area as well. It might have been a service area where John and Al worked on some stuff themselves.
Here are the tinplate times pictures, this first one you can see the catacombs, well one of them behind Al and when I was there the 213 and Brute were in that exact display

Also when I visited, there was a lot of this type of clutter, not this much but it was begining. But he would know right where something specific was buried at and go to it and dig for it no matter what it was for.

Here is a link to another picture that really shows the catacombs lol

Here is the gated door Dave mentioned

Are those the Orient Express cars you were talking about Dave? I had forgotten about them. There was just so much there, it was overwhelming. Definitely one of those situations where ther ewas no way you could take it all in during one visit and probably not even over a few visits.

[healey36]

At some point you start to wonder why one would accumulate that much stuff.