What do you like best about Tinplate?

Your TINPLATE is GORGEOUS!! We are smitten by tinplate. What you are doing to your layout IS a big job! Please post photos of your layout.

Thanks,

Gary.

I enjoy the tinplate as it has been with me all of my life.
Every Christmas my Dad set up his tinplate trains, some of
which he got from HIS Dad! I eventually got a tinplate Marx
windup set and later on a Post War Lionel set. Both of which
I still have today! And they are in great shape and run all
the time on my permanent layouts as well as a Christmas one
in my living room.

I also collected tinplate on my own since the 1950s starting
with a Lionel 253 and some freight cars that I bought with
paper route money. Still have them too! I now have over 150
cataloged sets and enough pieces to assemble another 24 "sets"
(a 'set' being a loco (and tender where applicable) and 3 cars).

I have two permanent layouts at my home. One "O" Gauge and one
Standard Gauge.

Running and working on my trains brings me back to simpler and
happier times when all was right with the world. Call it "stress
relief" if you will. I just call it FUN!

All of my tinplate is original and 95% of it has ALL of its own
original parts, wiring and paint. A few that I have "rescued"
over the years got refurbed but using original parts and pieces
wherever possible. Some,indeed, get a new coat of paint as the
original pait was in bad shape. But I try as often as possible
to preserve the as-built patina and finish because most of my trains
have come down through the family and will continue on. And I want
the future custodians to know and feel the history of the previous
owners and know the fun they enjoyed with them.

Yes, I have also collected many other trains, but they, too, have
family history as I went to shows and meets with my Dad, Uncles and
Cousins, so it is still "family" as far as the tinplate trains go.

Hope to be able to put up some pics in the future. This is my first
real posting here. So I will step aside for now.

Thank you.

 Click images to enlarge

Pictures of my "o" Gauge tinplate layout using all pre-war track, switches,
crossings and trains. Plasticville is 1st generation and tin buildings are original.
Accessories are also original pre-war.


     Click images to enlarge

Pictures of my Standard Gauge tinplate layout using all pre-war track, switches,
crossings and trains. Plasticville is 1st generation and wooden buildings were handmade
by my late Dad.

These layout tables measure 6 feet x 12 feet and are my permanent layouts. I have 
much more packed away than I can possibly exhibit.

Your layout looks fantastic--please keep posting photos!!

The rumble, the rattle, the smell, the strange connection to real trains through those sensations.

My local model railroad group usually puts on a bi-annual charity show, with beautiful modular HO & N layouts from both sides of the Canada/US border. These guys have their fans, but the casual visitors had an endless attraction to two of the layouts - a vintage American Flyer S gauge modular display and a Lionel tinplate display put together on the spot, carpet-style. 

The more I age, the more tinplatish I get. My few vintage Standard Gauge items have definitely sparked ideas, and I still have my boyhood clockwork Hornby O gauge set. Once that tinplate finish rubs off on you, it can't be removed!

FW

A little "family tinplate history". Here I am in Christmas 1954.

Behind me are my Dad's tinplate trains under a REAL tree!

Today these trains (two of which were HIS Dad's) are now
in my collection and are run regularly. They still perform as
new almost a century later and are ORIGINAL in all forms.

And he had several more that aren't in that picture that were
"rotated" each Christmas so as to be "new" for that year.




    Click image to enlarge

My favorite train set is a post-war Hornby tinplate set in its battered box - what I like best about it is that it is clockwork - wind up the key and take off the 'brake' and off it goes! (These are smaller than the usual Hornby.)