Does anyone have a good picture of the 1910 American Flyer Trolley? I have a friend who collects trolleys and when I told him about the trolley, of which he was unaware of, he requested a photo of one. I told him I did not have one but I would ask a round.
strainst
Here is a Type V Clockwork Locomotive number 15 variation D, ca. 1919-1920. With a length of 7 3/4" it was American Flyers largest cast iron Clockwork ever.
Ray
Bayville, NJ
Life is what happens to youWhile you're busy making other plans - John Lennon
Northwoods,
I do have a variation of the dark blue 3046 that you mention. It appears to have white lettering on the bottom of the car, similar to that of your neighbor's set.
I also have another variation of a blue 3046. It is an earlier car and is not in the greatest of shape. I have seen others similar to this early variation.
Excellent posts folks. The information that you have been providing is really great. You have expanded my knowledge about the wind-up equipment that Flyer produced. Thanks and keep up the good work.
3046 Log Car
Several pages back I posted photos of the #1346 Jeffersonian set that my neighbor owns.
The Northwoods Flyer Collection
of
American Flyer Trains
"The Toy For the Boy"
i checked out the MyStudio setup and it looks nice, but i have always had a problem with white backgrounds. US steam locos typically being all black, off-black, or mostly black, i've found the important details get washed out when the camera tries to balance the entire frame. that's why i've been trying the brown cardboard, albeit not very esthetic, backgrounds.
a few weeks ago i got an idea from another forum friend who recently who showed me a photo of his setup. essentially it's nearly identical to the MyStudio product, but with a blue background. he does incorporate the curved vertical transition to eliminate the horizontal seam, though the MyStudio seems a little more flexible with the full corner available for added depth when you need it.
i actually just stopped at a framing store a few days ago and picked up some matte sheets in a few colors to try and spruce up my shots a little.
thanks for the information...gary
overlandflyer i just recently joined the DSLR club and finding it an invaluable aid in studying and comparing models. point and shoot cameras are ok for eBay ads, but nothing beats the clarity of a long exposure, near-pinhole aperture photo you can get with a good digital camera.
i just recently joined the DSLR club and finding it an invaluable aid in studying and comparing models. point and shoot cameras are ok for eBay ads, but nothing beats the clarity of a long exposure, near-pinhole aperture photo you can get with a good digital camera.
I have had an SLR camera for going on 30 years and purchased a digital SLR camera about 5 years ago. I also use a mystudio purchased from procyc.com when taking pictures of trains. Their mystudio unit provides for an uninterrupted background and excellent lighting and works excellent for taking pictures of trains or other small items.
huh, i can see that difference now. i'll have to add those guide lines. i usually just pick up on the location of the casting joiner bar. located close to the stack, it's placement is usually visible from many angles.
thanks...gary
Overlandflyer, thanks for the interesting posts on clockwork. One thing about the pictures of the Type VIII and Type VII. Instead of the dimensional differences you note I think the easier visual clues for differences would be the extension of the boiler front and the extension and compression of the cowcatcher. The Type VII boiler front and the rivet line are much further away from the end of the running boards and the gap between the steam chest/cylinder and the side of the cowcatcher is also much greater.
These cars are very rare and I only know of 3 (but am sure there are others to be discovered) and this is the only one I know of with the 4 wheel frame. The others have 8 wheel trucks.
The tabs below the roof line is common on early cars and there is a spreader bar that keeps the sides of the car spread apart and hold the roof in place.
As for the lightening bolts, the thought is that they signified the electric line of American Flyer trains. A theory on why the use of the steam loco with the lightening bolts disappeared from the passenger coaches is that Flyer was developing the boxcab locomotive and the steam engine logo with the lightening bolts would have been out of place with the boxcab engine. It makes sense, but who can say, as this logo was still used on the baggage cars that were produced with the later series of lightening bolt cars.
great car! other clues to its age are the earlier Type VII frame and the "American Flyer" without the "Lines". do the tabs below the roof line support recessed vestibules? i've seen this on a a few early cars, but i don't think i have any with that feature.
i'll take a guess at the ambiguity of the lightning bolts for the graphics change, ...lightning as in fast? or as in electrified? substituting the winged engine left no doubt that speed (after all, they were flyers!) was the implication.
cheers...gary
overlandflyer well i won't claim this one was a garage sale find, but i suppose everyone has their own idea of value. when i combined the rarity and the condition, i continue to have no post-auction regret. my nemesis has been the Hummer #7 electric outline, clockwork loco. i've seen a few at auction in the past decade or so that have met my condition minimums but have had to throw in the towel each time. is there a 1910 Flyer trolley in the house? cheers...gary
well i won't claim this one was a garage sale find, but i suppose everyone has their own idea of value. when i combined the rarity and the condition, i continue to have no post-auction regret. my nemesis has been the Hummer #7 electric outline, clockwork loco. i've seen a few at auction in the past decade or so that have met my condition minimums but have had to throw in the towel each time.
is there a 1910 Flyer trolley in the house?
I do not have the #7 Empire Express electric outline locomotive either. The prices on those have been quite high in recent years and I have not wanted to spend the money.
As for the 1910 trolley, I have seen three of them and heard of a 4th, but have never seen one for sale. The last one I heard about selling, went for a crazy amount, but it is a beauty.
I only recently acquired a unpunched Chicago car c. 1907.
I guess I will offer up the following car for discussion. This car is c. 1918 or 1919? and is the earliest form of the lightening bolt car, which seems to have been discontinued shortly after being produced. It is not described in the Greenberg's guide and not shown in the Flyer catalogs of the era. Instead of having the three lightening bolts below the window in a circle, it has a variation similar to the winged loco that features a steam engine with lightening bolts coming out of either side. This logo is more commonly found on the lightening bolt baggage cars. In fact, if you look at the number of this car, 1205, it is the common number for baggage cars and not a passenger coach. There is a matching light brown baggage car for this, but there was not one with the set that this was in.
clockwork Types VII & VIII have got to be the two hardest to distinguish. so much so that one of the very few Greenberg errors is the comparison photo on page 40 where the captions claim you are looking at a Type VII and a Type VIII when, in fact, the pictures are both Type VII locomotives.
Type VIII is only ¼" shorter than Type VII. pictured are the two clues that can help you distinguish one from the other when a measurement is not given or merely estimated. of course if the cab is embossed with the "A.F.12" it is definitely a Type VII, but Type VII's also came, perhaps even more commonly, with the plain red stripe, too. cheers...gary
Here is a Type VI Clockwork Locomotive number 0 variation A, ca. 1916-1918.
Gary,
That is a great piece. I have been looking for one for several years and just have not come across one in reasonable condition at a reasonable price.
NWL
hosting the 1933 World's Fair had to have helped out local Chicago businesses...
#570 Trolley Car
retailing at 30¢, tens of thousands of these unpowered trolleys were sold in 1933, yet few apparently survived. though advertised as a floor toy, it does have tinplate, O gauge, flanged wheels and a bell that rings off a cam bend in the axle, but unfortunately it seems to take a minor disassembly to access the headlamp battery, ...perhaps a reason many were eventually discarded? cheers...gary
Since we are on "Clockwork" I thought I might share some of mine with you fans.
Type XII, #2 or 12, 1922-1932
More to follow.
overlandflyer i found the Type VIII shell (i notice you don't always use the Schuweiler "types" for the cast iron locomotives shown) with the electric motor (pg 49 in this string) to be the most interesting piece shown and surprised nobody seemed to comment on it. all the early electric motors i have are too large to fit in any shell but the large Type V and X (No.'s 15), though one of them does have the larger version of the 'inside sealed armatures" motor you picture in that note. at first i didn't think this was a Flyer motor, but the pickups eventually led me to believe it was having the same hardware as another motor i have with the more common open-side design.
i found the Type VIII shell (i notice you don't always use the Schuweiler "types" for the cast iron locomotives shown) with the electric motor (pg 49 in this string) to be the most interesting piece shown and surprised nobody seemed to comment on it. all the early electric motors i have are too large to fit in any shell but the large Type V and X (No.'s 15), though one of them does have the larger version of the 'inside sealed armatures" motor you picture in that note.
at first i didn't think this was a Flyer motor, but the pickups eventually led me to believe it was having the same hardware as another motor i have with the more common open-side design.
I want to thank you for posting pictures of your steam engine with the unusual motor. As for the post on Page 49 not gathering more attention, it is probably because it is such a difficult to find item, as is your motor, that few people know about these engines. They appear to be a short-lived variation that must have been made around 1922. Your picture gives me something else to look for.
N.Fly'r, well it's nice to know we probably don't butt heads in auctions very often. my collection only contains a couple examples of diecast or later and i tend to favor 4wh rolling stock.
here's some research i did recently i thought might be of interest...
i discovered a c/w drive in a Type VI shell with a patent date stamped on the side of November 1915.
i thought about the fact that Hafner left Flyer in 1914/15 and that the Flyer clockwork motor radically changed at about the same time and started searching patents. it took a while (notice there is no reference to Coleman or American Flyer), but i finally found this patent filed by the Parker Clock Co. of Meriden, Conn (interestingly ~20 miles from New Haven):
http://www.google.com/patents/US1159437
so apparently the original left-side keyed, clip-in motor, ...
clearly a Hafner design, ...
was replaced by the Wachtelhausen design in 1915, ...
which was modified in shape (for all but the large Types) sometime in the early 1920's, ...
pretty much keeping that standard shape until the end of the cast iron clockworks in the early 1930's.
overlandflyer,
Thanks for another great post. I have to admit that my collection does not have representatives from this area of American Flyer production. I have tried to avoid reading Chapter 3 (Clockwork-Powered Steam Locomotives) of the Greenberg Guide by Schuweiler simply because I don't want to be tempted to start collecting these locomotives as well. The display area in the train room is already full and too many of my pieces are spending time in boxes under the layout. I have to admit that the clockwork and cast iron engines are very interesting, and I hope you can provide some additional photos of this segment of equipment. I know that Mersenne6, Otis B.Drinkwater, AF53 and NationWideLines have all made contributions. This is an area I look forward to leaning more about.
"i found the Type VIII shell (i notice you don't always use the Schuweiler "types" for the cast iron locomotives shown) with the electric motor (pg 49 in this string) to be the most interesting piece shown and surprised nobody seemed to comment on it."
In my opinion the work done by Schuweiler is excellent and gives structure to what could otherwise be a bewildering array of equipment. Even with his work it can still be a challenge. I learned most of what I know about PreWar Flyer Narrow and Wide Gauge from his books, and from The Collector, the publication of the now disbanded American Flyer Collectors Club shepherded by Frank Hare. As this thread grew I realized it would be a good idea to try to keep the identification of pieces consistent and in line with the system that Schuweiler developed. Sadly, the books are out of print and expensive to own for most folks. Some folks who have posted here don't have access to these resources so I think you will find folks trying to identify pieces as best they can. I am definitely in favor of using his "Types" as a method of identification. You will have noticed that we have even identified some examples of equipment that weren't mentioned in the books. Ahhh the fun of collecting American Flyer PreWar trains! Even after this many years there are new things to discover.
Thanks for the heads-up on your group on Yahoo. It looks like I am going to have to join just so that I can take a look at the photos posted there. Somehow I sense another black hole of time is about to be explored.
Enjoying the World's Greatest Hobby
Northwoods Flyer
i've actually been constructing a similar string in the Yahoo group - prewarOgauge, though limited to mostly AF steam from ~1911-1935 including most cast iron and sheet metal types. i suppose there are benefits from both inline photos v. a separate photo section, but i'll eventually likely have 200+ photos there and find when it gets to that size, a photo gallery presentation is a little easier to navigate.
here is one of my most interesting pieces:
a type XIII shell with "A.F. 9" embossed under the cab. it is mentioned in the Greenberg text, but only as hearsay. i actually found it in an live online auction with a picture too small to see the embossing, but as it was oddly described as a "#9" locomotive i took a chance that it was indeed marked and wound up (from at least my prospective) stealing it.
i also found a slight difference in the Type XIII casting that isn't mentioned in the Greenberg text.
both Type XIII, the lower shell includes 4 mounting posts in the casting used to center the smaller econo-motor. the smaller motor also required a second screw with a spacer to secure the rear of the motor which is missing the rear slots that normally butt into the casting as the standard motor was secured. by the way, the large econo-motor has the same form-fit as the standard Flyer clockwork motor, but i doubt if any ever left the factory that way.
since the small econo-motor went on to populate the next generation Type XV shell-type (though the key was redesigned to be a screw-in type), i have to imagine that the earliest casting version was the large motor version.
the Greenberg text shows a standard Flyer clockwork motor (right hand key) in a Type XIII shell, but my feeling is that all Type XIII's left the factory with the cheap clockwork (large or small) and when those may have failed (i believe the economy motors were not lifetime guaranteed), the user found a spare standard clockwork drive to substitute.
appreciate the welcome, and though you're right that i am a prewar fan, i'm also retired so have the time to kill most days. and yes, i am a Hafner collector preferring 4wh cars and clockwork motors, but i also range to Marx and Am Flyer.
i'll have to check my records to verify the contents of the set box, but i believe it was a Type I loco small freight set. the tag is too faded to see any of the original printing, but there is a handwritten "$1.50" still visible.
actually the upload process i have to re-learn is getting the images up to my webspace. Cox deleted their web service recently and i'm now having to poach one of my aunt's Comcast accounts which has a similar confusing process (which i believe they do on purpose).
overlandflyer i hope to add some pictures, but thought i'd start with just one (never posted to this site before and just want to make sure i have the method down). it was noted in the catalog cover photos that the 1914 shot also appeared on a box cover. this cover must have been post-1915, however, with the Halsted St. address v. W. Kinzie. cheers...gary
i hope to add some pictures, but thought i'd start with just one (never posted to this site before and just want to make sure i have the method down). it was noted in the catalog cover photos that the 1914 shot also appeared on a box cover. this cover must have been post-1915, however, with the Halsted St. address v. W. Kinzie.
I have seen the 1914 variation, which is a full color paper label with the Kinzie Street address. The black and white version, as you showed, was printed directly on the box, as opposed to being a paper label like the 1914 variation.
to the forums and welcome to the thread. Its good to have you here. Wow, three hours! You must be a die hard Pre War fan.
Thanks for posting the photo of the box cover. It looks like you didn't have any problems with figuring out the process. Do you have any idea what the contents of the box were? That small price tag on the end of the box is intriguing. Any idea the store it came from or the price?
Does your name indicate an interest in Hafner trains?
We'll be looking forward to more photos and contributions. Thanks again for joining us.
wow, nice string, though it took me about 3 hours to get through the 60 pages even noting a few that i will read more closely sometime later.
Thanks for the explanations Northwoods Flyer. I didn't think about variations, but I should have, given that seems to be quite common with model trains. I can see how the gleam that I took to be a lens is actually a reflection from the bulb.
Thanks also for the coupler explanation. The pattern seems to be that there is no pattern. Missing parts aside, someone in the design/manufacturing areas had to be making these decisions. Maybe it was simply based on inventory - lots of couplers then put on both ends - short on couplers then put on one end.
Couplers by themselves are interesting. I don't suppose there was any motivation for manufacturers to make their products link up with others. Tab and slot couplers come close - except, for instance, AF tab and slots are higher off the rail than Marx ones. But AF, Ives, Marx, and Lionel prewar couplers seem to run the gamut in design. I realize that this not a collector issue other than historically documenting the changes.
Thanks again. Y'all are very helpful.
Craig
Southern Colorado Marx Flyer:
Craig,
You have a nice example of the Type XXI Pennsylvania locomotive cataloged from 1936 to 1939. I have all three variations of this locomotive and none of them have a lense in the headlight. The two earliest versions have a ring around the headlight as a part of the casting, but no seperate trim ring or bezel. My black engine that you have pictured above has the ring painted white so it looks as if it is a seperate ring. What looks like a lense in the headlight is actually light reflecting off of the bulb inside the engine. The third variation has an entirely redesigned nose piece and the headlight is also a part of that casting.
A few posts back you asked about the difference between engines that have couplers at one end vs those that have a coupler at each end. I'm not sure that there is any pattern to why that is. I'll bet that some have lost their couplers over the years. I think that it makes sense that engines that could reverse would have a coupler at both ends so that cars could be pulled with the engine in either position. Those that only went in one direction would technically only need one coupler, but I have some steeple cabs and medium sized box cabs that only go in one direction and still have a coupler at each end.
Thanks NWL. Maybe there is not one.
When I compare the one I have
to a picture posted on this thread
it looks like mine is missing a trim ring/bezel and lens. But it is definitely not conclusive. It may be just an artifact of the photographic lighting or something.
I do not believe that there is a headlight lense on the torpedo locomotives. I have a super example of an original black torpedo from 1936 and I just looked and there is no headlight lense on the front of it.
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