Good, well at least I wasn't insulting him then.........
Whoever is making them should improve the plastic, and charge just slightly more. I would rather pay for quaility than quantity.
After reading about all of the problems with some reproduction drums, I am now wondering if my drum that was so distorted (shown in the photo on the previous page) was a reproduction. How do you identify reproduction drums?
Earl
Earl,
The black drum that you have is an original. I have seen original drums that are black, red, and green. There may be more colors, but that is all that I have ever serviced. To my knowledge, all repro drums are white.
Well, this thread is going in a good direction then. Im still going through my stock of white drums from Jeff from a few years back. I apologize as I assumed they were still being made.
Maybe Jeff can get the white ones back in production or Olsten's.
Mike S.
msaccoWell, this thread is going in a good direction then. Im still going through my stock of white drums from Jeff from a few years back. I apologize as I assumed they were still being made.
The fellow who had the white drums made is no longer making them. He sold the tooling to another person who may have recently started making durms after a gap of several years. The drums that are currently being made are black with brass contacts (as opposed to copper). Lionel is selling these drums. I don't know whether Lionel had them made directly, or if they are buying them from the person who has the aforementioned dies. I do know that Lionel used to sell the drums made by the fellow who had previously owned the dies.
I have not tried any of these recently made black / brass drums.
As far as original drum colors go, Jim already listed black, red, and green. There are two different greens, grey, brown and during the Modern Era, there were some clear drums made. Also, older drums have silver plated contacts, as do older e-unit contact fingers. I don't know when they discontinued the silver plating.
It may be the lighting, your repaired drum seems to have silver contacts.
As far as I know, nobody has made reproduction drums with silver contacts.In addition, the black drums only came on the market recently, I seem to recall that you mentioned putting this drum back together again a while ago, before this latest batch was released.
So your drum is almost certainly original.
As an aside, I have a few drums in red, bright green, and black with similar distortion (not as pronounced) . In my case the drums were never installed. The plastic has a different quality to it's appearance on these drums. It does not seem to be the same time of plastic as was normally used. So there must have been something wrong with the material. (Maybe I should get my Lionel plastics lab out, and figure out what they are made from) :)
Call me a dinosaur, call be obsolete, call me hopelessly old-fashioned, but dammit before I put my hard-earned money down on something I want to SEE it.
Maybe I miss out on a lot of things, but so what? This is a hobby, not a religion. Not to me anyway.
trainrat You do not mention what set you bought so I cannot say about that part. Ebay can be difficult to buy from because too many sellers either are not knowledgeable, or are passing off their worst pieces from their collections. Others buy from an estate sale or somewhere else and try to make big bucks passing them off as something other than what they really are. Roger
You do not mention what set you bought so I cannot say about that part. Ebay can be difficult to buy from because too many sellers either are not knowledgeable, or are passing off their worst pieces from their collections. Others buy from an estate sale or somewhere else and try to make big bucks passing them off as something other than what they really are.
Roger
I have figured out what is wrong with my brain! On the left side nothing works right, and on the right side there is nothing left!
Dave Smith had a post about squeezing a warped drum back into shape with pliers. I had a drum overheat some years ago, and didn't have a replacement, so I squeezed it back into shape. Worked fine.
old iron daveI only had 1 bad experience buying on ebay I bought a lionel ZW. The seller said it was recently serviced. It turned out it wasn't. It looked great though ! When i brought this to the attention of the seller he dismissed it . I knew from this response that i wasn't going to get any satisfaction , so my parting response was that all items he sells in the future should be safe . This unit was serviced incorrectly and was a potential hazzard which is what i conveyed to the seller. The takeaway is that from that moment on i would only buy from a seller with good feedback and really look at pictures. Some sellers do sell items that they are not familiar with and will tell you that. It is the buyers responsibility to make sure they get the best deal and that you are getting what you want. RegardsDave
https://brentsandsusanspicutures.shutterfly.com/
Interesting comment. I have always wondered about shill bidders. How do I identify them?
I only have 50+ winning bids-about 2/3 being train related-, but I set my high number when I find an item and generally know it's value to me. I almost always try to snipe the bid, waiting until the last minute,often losing the bid. On eBay, timing is everything. I can honestly say that I have never been disappointed with a buy from eBay because I assume the item to be less than described. I did buy a stolen item once, but was compensated-not by eBay- but by the original owner.
Still, $345 for a clapped out 2333 AA is a little steep. I might feel a little peevish about that.
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