To restore or to refrain

When do you decide to restore a toy train and when do you decide to leave if as it is?
That depends on the rarity of the object, the condition and your own personal motives. Most Lionel prewar toy trains are common and ubiquitously available in the Northern America's. Consequently, many prewar wagons can be purchased for 10-20 USD. Since most toy trains have been played with, they are often dented, bended, spot-rusted and some parts might be missing. But spare parts are either available or can be machined, since they are metal-based.
The conservatives thinks that we should leave these toy trains as they are right now, with all their character, patina and age. But then we are preserving their current condition, not their original condition. They were not played with with dents and nicks. Personally I favour to try to return them back to the original condition, as close as is possible. Then you can experience the same as kids did some 80 or more years ago. The bright colours, the tin rattle on the rails, the smell of ozone.
I will make exceptions for rare objects. I would not like to touch those. But since these tend to be expensive and therefore typically end up somewhere else, this has not created any issues, yet. Since fewer toy trains survived WWII in Europe, most prewar toy trains tend to be expensive, especially from the Märklin-brand. Therefore, I prefer to avoid those and stick to cheap and cheerful mass-produced American brands.

Well, Frank, I am sure you would agree that this 814 boxcar can better be restored.

But this is not a black and white polarised discussion. With more and more prewar toy trains in poor to extremely poor condition being marketed via Internet auction sites, not restoring simply means letting it rust away. Especially for this category, a full restoration yields personal satisfaction, having salvaged it from the trash bin.

This Lionel 812 gondola has already been rescued from a rusty disintegration. There is no point to leave it in this dilapidated condition.

Painting Paya coach roof tops

It has already been a few weeks since I painted the self-fabricated replacement roof for the Paya 987 Salon coach. Since then the other original paint-chipped roofs looked like crap and I had to step in and do something about it. I reckoned that sanding the roofs smooth would do the trick, but that proved to be a mistake. The old black primer paint is not compatible with modern paint types. So, I could only do one thing. Sand both roofs back to bare metal, prime them with conventional primer paint and then spray white over them. Since it was a lovely sunny day, that is just what I have done.

Now those roofs are much better indeed on the Paya 987 coaches. I placed the Lionel 259E in front of them, since this was the original for the Paya 987 steam engine copy.

Lionel 151 Semaphores

A few weeks ago, I picked up these Lionel 151 semaphores. One operated directly smoothly. The other has a too tight return spring, which caused the signal arm to vibrate. Well that has been sorted and I will wire them tomorrow.
Last weeks I was busy with loads of other things. Like staring at cars and folks that stare towards shiny cars during the AutoRai car show in distant Amsterdam.

Autorai Amsterdam 2015