Friday, June 13, 2014
Rain and more rain!
Rain and more rain!
Some Nice Prewar
Trains and Accessories
As you know, I like to periodically return to all of the people whom I've written about and see what news they might have or be selling. I ventured over to Stout Auction earlier this week and found a nice collection of trains that will be going to auction tomorrow (June 14, 2014).
I've always liked real and toy trains because there is so much to be seen. The landscapes, the accessories, and of course all of the different train engines and cars from the 20th century and even earlier. So for today, I selected a small collection that naturally caught my eye. What I also like about toys, and especially old trains is that they were hand-built. It's hard to imagine how many fine train toy sets were built over the last 100 years, and most were built by skilled people who assembled them by hand!
I know that the above locomotive and tender would never be described in auctioneer language as "cute", but that's what I see. It reminds me of the children's story about "the train that could"!
What I like about the older trains is that there are plenty of them on the mark. But my main reason for liking them is that they can easily be fixed. If you're handy with basic electricity, you could easily rewire the lights on these toys. If you're not comfortable with this, they almost any hobby shop or electrician would be able to repair these toys for you.
What I also like about toy trains is all of the accessories that can be found for trains. Stout Auctions takes great photographs and arranges they items quite well. If you enlarge the above photo in Blogger "slide show" mode, you'll see the workmen in the lowest 2 towers pulling large-sized gears to change the tracks.
These accessories would make great art collages when assembled together in large-sized shadowbox frames. Their colour and design, and of course the interesting pieces would easily hag well in any home.
Great colours!
I always liked the specialty cars that could be purchased for train sets.
Here are 2 more "cute" railway toy cars.
For the "purist" collector, the box or packaging that accompanies a toy is also valuable. Most toys that I ever had of course had me throwing out the box that the toy came in. However, my 1950's Lionel trains were always kept in their boxes!
What I like about the above train is its intrinsic simple design that shows the train in its best form. My favourite car is the Porsche. What I've always liked about the Porsche is the simplicity of its design complimented by its elegance, and of course its sporting features. The Porsche design changes ever so subtly from year to year, and that's what I like. As for this fine Lionel train, it's the beautiful curves of the body and large-sized wheels that contrast with the horizontal pipes and lines of the engine-
Elegance through Simplicity!
I hope the weather where you are is better than it's been here in Montreal for the last 2 days. Of course, the good news is that the grass seed and soil that I placed on the bare spots of my lawn will get enough rain to germinate in no time.
Thanks for dropping by to visit,
and as always,
have a great part of the day or night,
wherever you may be,
Stacey
toysearcher@gmail.com
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