MARX QUESTION AGAIN AND THANKS TO ALL WHO RESPONDED TO 3inone OIL AND OTHER QUESTIONS

[Anonymous]

There are a great bunch of people on these forums and in the hobby. A sincere thank you to all who answer. There is tremendous amount of experience and knowledge to be shared in these forums so we should thank Kalmbach too. Now the pleasure of the o gauge hobby to me is finding a old engine or two and other equipment and getting it running again and the pleasure of children's faces as they enjoy the Lionel experience once again after all these years in this fast paced video game world. Its a great sense of reward and accomplishment to getting even a small layout running and actually figuring out how to repair these precious old toys. So..who is the best source for Marx parts?  I recently got my 1953 Marx train running again and a couple of the cars are missing wheelsets. That was quite a great invention having that tiny wire holding the truck assembly together to those who know what I mean. I was able to steal a part or two off the other cars but my question is how hard is it to replace the rivets or whatever you call them that hold the trucks on in case I want to replace a whole truck assembly for 1950's Marx cars. Thanks to all those who respond and if you live in the Seattle area like I do you know its a winter wonderland!!

[Dave Farquhar]

Best source of parts would be Robert Grossman, at www.trainpartsformarx.com.

If you need to replace one of the rivets (technically an eyelet) holding a truck in place, you've got several options. You could just use a screw and a locknut from the hardware store. For one or two cars, that's probably the cheapest option and it doesn't require any more tools. If you want something that looks more original, you can get eyelets and the eyelet tool from Grossman, but you can also get eyelets and an eyelet setter at craft or scrapbooking stores. A package of 50 eyelets only costs a couple of dollars. I think the tool is about $5.

I've also used pop rivets to attach trucks, but I don't like that method very much. It's a lot of work to make sure the trucks aren't attached too tightly.

One thing you might consider, if you have Marx cars that are missing entire truck assemblies, would be to put a Lionel or K-Line truck on in place of a Marx truck. Then you can use those cars as conversion (transition) cars, so you can run your Marx and Lionel cars together. I've done a couple of cars like that and they've been invaluable for me.