1959 American Flyer no. (21)234 complete set

[JBraun]

I have my brother's set from 1959 and am wondering just what I can do with it without really damaging its value.   The good news is that everything appears to work.   The bad new is the rocket has broken fins (I just orderd a reproduction), the engine's drive wheels have dry-rotted rubber and the oil tanks have broken tabs.   Oh, and no original boxes.

So, my questions if someone can answer:  1) Can I replace the rubber on the two wheels without reducing the value?   I am not even sure I can find replacement rubber just yet.  But without it, the train cannot pull all the cars without slipping.  2)  How do you actually wire up the button for the rocket launcher?  I want to make sure I don't damage it by getting the polarity reversed  (if indeed that can happen).  When it was stored the wire was wrapped around the the controller with both free ends connected underneath it (making a complete loop).  I know one end wires to the track connector.  Does the other go to the transformer?  3)  I would also like to get it to generate smoke but don't want to use the wrong product.  Any recommendations on where I can by the correct fluid.

Thank you,
Jay

[Anonymous]

Jay,

         Doug at Portlines has the rubber tires for the wheels as well as Anormal 1 smoke fluid, which is the original Gilbert formula. Here is a link to Doug's site.

www.portlines.com

 

[lionelsoni]

Those rubber-tired wheels are Pull-Mor wheels.  Only after modern Lionel locomotives started using "can" motors was the term applied ex post facto to their older universal motors.

[ADCX Rob]

lionelsoni

...Only after modern Lionel locomotives started using "can" motors was the term applied ex post facto to their older universal motors.

Which was after Lionel "re-coined" the trademark in 1970 to reflect that the entire line of Lionel locos had "Pull-Mor" motors - eg. they all had traction tires.  How Pull-Mor, or Pul-Mor, as a term or trademark got separated from describing "traction-tire equipped" is a mystery to me.  Who was responsible for that?

Now we have traction-tire equipped locos with can motors not called Pull-Mor, and MagneTraction locos w/o tires called Pull-Mor.

Rob