Prewar 1930s Lionel Trains | Discovery & Overview

Just a heads up - numerous commenters have pointed out that the Lionel models are Standard Gauge, not O Gauge. Sorry for any confusion and thank you for the interest!

Most of the item are standard Guage and are looking to be in good condition. Gently clean them. They don’t look like they need a full restoration. Standard Guage is always fun to run

What a stunning group of models, good on you and how nice it is to hear your enthusiasm. First up: Be aware the roundhouse part is very, very expensive, if you part with it you won't get another one. Not only expensive, but rare. A very quick look in an older guide gives that 1 piece at $2000. And yes, reproductions were being made at that time. They are rare, and expensive :) (P.S it's a lionel #444) And a few more things: it's all standard gauge, not 0, standard being the "premium" gauge. FYI your 318 is an early pre '27 example: if you have a look underneath you'll note the gears on the wheels are very large, actually being larger than the wheel tread. Later lionel altered the super motor by adding extra gearing, and as a consequence those wheel gears ended up being smaller. With your example if you run it over the turnout you'll notice a big thump and jump as the early big gears hit the turnout rails. More FYI: the steam tender to be an Ives transition era. It looks to be all diecast, which lionel didn't make, but when lionel took over Ives in the late twenties for a few years they sold Ives equipment with lionel badges before calling it quits. You'll also note the oddity of instead of lionel lines it badged as being THE lionel RAILWAY lines, not normal nomenclature for lionel, especially with the term railway, not railroad. Love the custom box cab: uses early #100 trucks and the pre- super motor drive set, possibly out of something like a #33. One of the obvious things is that the boxcab has it's own very unique place in modeling history. It's easy to think of early standard gauge or 0 gauge as being bright toy trains going around in circles. What a lot don't recall is that the equipment was what modelers had available to use for the model railroads like we have today. That custom made boxcab was built to serve a function on a model railroad. Yes, there's a certain crudity about it (adds to the charm) but full credit to the modeller building. Remember there were no plastics, only wood and if available tinplate (even tinplate was unavailable during WWII and it's not a pleasant material to hand build model trains from) NJDIV I presume means New Jersey Division. I just noted the end few minutes of your video that most of the items you got rid of... it'd be very interesting to know what happened to that roundhouse section... just proves that theres still that occasional very rare find to be had...

Great video! It’s unfortunate that your grandfather’s friend passed away, however what you’ve shown in this video is a great find, and I’d love to get my hands on something like it one day!

What a intresting change of pace! Gotta be one of my favorite videos on your channel yet, very informative and well put together. Congrats! Long live the Brink Lines!

Roundhouse is almost impossible to find. That piece is a real treasure.

Fantastic video! I love all of the discoveries you made and it’s nice to see a change of pace from wooden railway! Also I’m no expert but I think all that stuff is a little bit rare, but I could be wrong though.

The extra caboose piece goes to a prewar observation car made by lionel

Okay, first off, what you've found there is standard gauge, not O gauge. The dark gray 318 locomotive was the first variation of the 318 Lionel made, and it was only issued in that color in 1924 - one year only for that color, then it changed to Mojave tan. The 513 cattle car you have is also the first version and fairly scarce - pea green sides and orange roof was first variation, 1927-1929, after that they went to much more common orange paint with an apple green roof, and lastly, yellow body with a brownish/brick red roof. The large wooden locomotive uses an early Lionel standard gauge motor inside a Lionel #38 locomotive frame (1913 to 1923) with early Lionel trucks on each end, it's a copy of a New Haven Railroad electric locomotive and you're correct, it's rather crude and homemade but still very impressive. The roundhouse section is VERY rare and worth quite a bit of money even in that condition. Best not to restore any of these pieces and leave any repair work up to a collector. The black gondola shown at the 14:17 mark has very scarce Ives large series passenger car trucks on it, which were used from 1925-1927 and are very much in demand by collectors - very hard to find a set in decent shape. The rest of the pieces are pretty common - track is easily found, rusty track like that is best sand blasted and just used to display trains on a shelf with. Great find and don't go crazy repainting anything, you'll greatly lessen the collector value of these pieces.

Beautiful . ❤

Great Video WRE! Love the essay video style. I would love to see you review an episode or 2.   :)

Lots of good finds! I’m glad that you know where and who the trains are from!

Also! A Great help in cleaning model track is Sand Paper and steel wool.

I has to blink twice to make sure I wasn't seeing things, as u uploading is very rare nowadays. Besides that rlly good video!

The wooden engine I’m guessing is a representation of a nyc s1 or s2. Not a bad

Amazing video WRE!!

You may already know by now, but this is not o gauge, but standard gauge. There is an abundance of information available on the internet to satisfy any degree of interest you may have.

Loose brass piece at 6:04 is the end railing for the observation car.

Yeah if you still have some of the stuff lam very interested in it thank you 😊

The custom electric locomotive is a boxcab electric. They were very common in the early 1900s especially when steam was banned in the New York subway tunnels.