Just Dropped In to Say Hey.

[Anonymous]

Hey Ya'll

Just thought I'd drop in to say hey since I've been away. Right now I am posting in the Model Railroader Forum.

Just recently though, I bought an American Flyer K5 Pacific. This one was made before the war and runs on 3 rail.

I bought it at a yard sale for $10. The paint is terrible, yet it runs, though it does need a great deal of work.

I'd like to convert the coupler on the back to a Lionel Knuckle coupler in the future (near Thanksgiving). Is this possible?

Steel Rails

[underworld]

Ummm.....HEY! [:p]

underworld

aka The Violet

[:D][:D][:D][:D][:D]

[1688torpedo]

Hello Steel Rails! Glad to hear from you.I'm not sure if you can mount a knuckle coupler on your prewar flyer without doing too much damage to it. You might want to ask one of the guys on one of the American Flyer forums & see what they have to say & if they can provide pictures for you to follow through with your project. Other than that I would leave it as is & have the engine repainted & maybe sometime in the future you can find the proper cars to go with it. Take Care.

[jimhaleyscomet]

Or make a transition car with A/F coupler on one end and knuckle on the other.

Jim H

[tcripe]

Another possibility to look into is seeing if one of those Lionel conversion couplers made to convert Scout cars to standard knuckle couplers would fit. the unit wraps around the axles of the truck. If the space between wheelsets is close to that of Lionel wheelsets, it might work. Of course you would turn the rear truck of the tender so that the AF coupler would face toward the center of the tender (This is all predicated on the assumption that the AF coupler is truck-mounted too).- Terry

[Dave Farquhar]

I would be inclined to make a transition car with a Lionel knuckle coupler on one end and the appropriate AF coupler on the other. Or run the loco with a Lionel tender. Personally, I don't like the modify vintage AF equipment if I can easily avoid it. Repair and restoration is another matter though--I'll do that.

Nice find! I found a 3-rail AF at a sale a couple of years ago, but I paid considerably more than $10 for it. I was still happy, needless to say.

[Anonymous]

First of all, Hey!

Second, What a great find! Congratulations! In regard to the coupler, as others have said, make a transition car with a Lionel coupler on one end and a Flyer on the other. Don't wreck it by trying to change the original coupler on the tender. Of course, you might end up finding some Flyer cars to go with it eventually.

[Anonymous]

Oh,

Is that a big find. I thought they were common. Otherwise I would have gone balistic over it. I saw that it is only worth $145 in exellent condition.

Anyway. I'm glad I stopped in.

Steel Rails

[Dave Farquhar]

They weren't made for very long, so no, I wouldn't call them common. I wouldn't call them rare either (they were mass produced, after all), but if memory serves, this is one of the models that was only made from 1938-1941.

Big find? Depends on how you look at it. It's not often that you find something for $10 that after some work will be worth 14x that. I was more than happy when I bought a Marx set in nice condition a couple of weeks ago for $80 that books in the $150-$200 range.