Other brands of tinplate?

Hornby is my jam. And clockwork too. I prefer the postwar slightly smaller units - which are kinda somewhat easier to find in the US.

There is a little bit of Flyer, Marx, Ives, Lionel in this shot.

That is a fantastic layout! Can you show us more?

I've seen photos of the Pride Lines trains but never one in 'real life' - I ran across a beautifully restored Bing clockwork set and a Fleischmann set - both seeming in O gauge - at an antiques dealer - complete with boxes. He was asking $250 each. 

Although Lionel might have outlasted the competition, I think Ives built a better product in both looks and mechanical quality.


My Ives 3252 has been restored (not necessarily the correct color) but the amount of detail put into it as far as rivets, body hatches and such just blows the similar era Lionel 153 locomotive out of the water.  Both are pretty equivalent offerings for both manufacturers and are replicas of the NYC's "S-motor" series of electric switchers.  Nearly the same size, both offer manual reverse switches, add on handrails, a decorative bell as well as a functional headlight.  The Ives locomotive has a cast iron side-frame and pilot assembly vs Lionel's stamped steel parts.

The Lithography work on the Ives cars also blew Lionel's basic stamped lettering out of the water.  Unfortunately the high production cost of these items left little profit as they competed with Lionel since their products sold at relatively similar price-points.  Ultimately they went bankrupt which lead to a joint purchase of the company assets by Lionel and American Flyer.

Here's an attempt to offer a reply to Mr. Meep!'s original request.





  With the exception of the Flyer freight station, the two Flyer lamp posts,  and the Ives ACL boxcar in the background, most of the trains are very early 20th Century European exports.  The train set in front is Issmayer and the two trains in the background are earlier and later versions of a KBN (Karl Bub Nurnberg) train set. The KBN engines have the same lithographed superstructure but they differ in terms of driver wheel size, steam dome construction , and other small details.  All of the trains in the picture are clockwork.

  The main station is Bing.  The station was offered from about 1906 to somewhere in the 1920's.  The simplified paint scheme for the station would place its manufacture in the 1920's.  The passenger platform is Bing from 1906.

  Most of the European toy train manufacturers who exported to the U.S. just sent over whatever they were making for the European market.  Some, like KBN, would try to "Americanize" their locomotives by sticking a cowcatcher onto the front of the engine.



These cowcatchers were removable and today one often finds these engines with the cowcatcher missing



  Unfortunately, I don't have enough space in my house to build a permanent layout.  What I do instead is assemble and photograph dioramas such as the one at the beginning of this post.  I'll try to post additional pictures and information to this thread as time permits.

  One of the things that used to bother a number of the more detail oriented postwar O gaugers was the fact of lack of differences in the reporting numbers of their freight cars.  For example, you could get the Lionel 6454 series of cars in various road names - Erie, Pennsylvania, NYC, SP, but only a single number for the cars for each road - Erie - 81000, AT&SF - 63132, NYC 159000, PRR - 65400, and SP - 96743 .

  To the best of my knowledge the first manufacturer (who also happened to be a tinplate manufacturer) to offer cars of the same road with different reporting numbers was Marx.  They produced four different road names - FGEX reefers, and State of Maine, Pennsylvania Merchandise, and NYC Pacemaker boxcars and NYC passenger mail cars with 16 different numbers.  They also turned out a Pennsylvania Merchandise car with no numbers.  So if you like tinplate, like the look of a solid string of freights with cars with different reporting marks, and don't mind spending the time trying to find an entire series - then Marx is something you might want to consider.