A Trip Down Memory Lane

Like many model railroaders, my interest in the hobby goes back to my childhood and my first Lionel train set.  The trains arrived on a Christmas morning when I was somewhere between 8 and 10 years old.  I can remember them like it was yesterday: There was a Santa Fe warbonnet A-B-A diesel lashup with half a dozen fluted aluminum passenger cars, and a massive Pennsylvania Railroad S-2 steam turbine pulling a string of freight cars, including a side dump car, a log dump car, and a wonderful milk car that popped little milk cans onto a platform at the push of a button.  Another Christmas brought an A-A F3 lashup in Western Pacific colors.  I loved to lie on the floor and watch the trains race past -- especially that massive steam turbine that was so heavy it took two hands to lift it! 

Maybe it was the next Christmas, or the one after that, but at some point my father secretly built a layout in the basement for my trains.  I remember it well: Two 4x8 sheets of plywood laid end-to-end, with a figure 8 main line and a passing siding.  There were little Plasticville houses with Christmas tree lights inside, and dad had even painted streets and green grass for the scenery.  The whole thing sat on pieces of 2x4 so that the layout was only about 31/2 inches high, and to my young eyes, it was wonderful!

As far as I know, no photos exist of that layout or of the Lionel trains on Christmas.  In fact, I forgot about trains when I went to high school.  My big love then was amateur radio, and I had no time for railroading.  Consequently, I had no idea what became of those trains, which must have cost my parents dearly in the early 1950s.   They were no more than a vague memory.

Then, a year or two ago, I received an email from my cousin Joe in New Jersey.  We grew up in towns only a few miles apart.  In cleaning out his attic he had come across  a carton filled with electric trains.  He wondered if they might belong to me!  Apparently, when they retired and moved to Florida, my parents had given those old Lionel trains away!  It took a while to arrange for the transfer, but a couple of weeks before last Christmas, a heavy box arrived at the local post office addressed to me.  I carried it home and tore it open.  At first, I was disappointed that the Santa Fe diesels and passenger cars were not there.  But then a miracle!  Wrapped in old newspapers was the Pennsy steam turbine!  It was a little beat up; the paint was chipped and several wheels were missing; but there was no doubt this was the engine I used to run around the Christmas tree as a boy!

A quick tour of the internet revealed that the S-2 6-8-6 steam turbine No. 681 was based on a prototype built by the PRR and was first produced by Lionel in 1950.  Produced from 1950-51 and in 1953, the locomotive came with the 2671W tender shown in the picture.   (Being born in 1942, I couldn't have been less than 8 years old when I got my first train set.)  The engine came with a smoke unit, headlight, and a three position directional switch located on the boiler just in front of the cab.  The locomotive was just as massive as I remembered it.

A little research found that only one prototype was ever built, #6200, delivered to the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1944.  The S-2 was the sole example of the 6-8-6 wheel arrangement.  It used a direct drive stream turbine geared to the center pair of axles with the outer two axles connected by side rods.  Unfortunately, the turbine could not operate efficiently over the engine's entire speed range.  At slower speeds, it used excessive steam and fuel.  The engine's problems and the advantages of the new diesel locomotive technology ensured that the experiment would never be duplicated.  Number 6200 was withdrawn from service in 1949 and scrapped in 1953.  Lionel, on the other hand, produced thousands of them, and they were a roaring success in the mid-twentieth century!

The box from my cousin's attic contained other memories from my childhood.  There was a gorgeous A-A pair of F-3 diesels in Western Pacific colors.  The locomotives were first produced in 1952 , when I was ten years old.

There were a few freight cars in the box, and one passenger observation car from a set I had forgotten about over the years.  The 3469 automatic coal dump car was a versatile freight car for the era, able to operate with any of Lionel's coal related accessories, and was known for its sturdiness and reliability.

The 2401 Hillside observation car was part of a passenger car set produced in the late 1940s.  It was Lionel's first injection-molded passenger car set, based on the latest streamlined passenger cars introduced on American railroads in the mid-1940s.

Since receiving the box of trains shortly before Christmas, I have located a Lionel repairman located on Cape Cod, and the S-2 steam turbine has been repaired.  The missing wheel sets have been replaced, a new smoke unit installed, the whistle repaired, and a new water scoop on the tender installed.  I hope to try it out at the Cape Cod Model Railroad Club's next open house -- it will be the first time the engine has run under power in many years.

As I said in the beginning, these Lionel trains started my interest in model railroading some 60 years ago, and it is a miracle to have some of them back again -- a genuine "trip down memory lane".  By now, of course, my interests have changed, and I model in HO scale rather than Lionel's O scale.  I also model the East Broad Top narrow gauge railroad, so the locomotives and rolling stock are even smaller!  Here is a comparison photo of Lionel's huge S-2 steam turbine in 1:48 O scale and 1:87 HO scale EBT #18 -- not a small engine in its own right, it weighed 80 tons and could pull a string of 22 hopper cars up the mountain to the mines. 

But while times may change, memories do not.  Finding the Lionel trains from my childhood, some 60 years ago, has been a wonderful and emotional experience.  I owe a debt of gratitude to my cousin Joe, for finding and sharing these wonderful souvenirs of those days of long ago.