During World War 2 Lionel was not allowed to make trains. They made compases and other items mostly for the Navy.
Madison Hardware in NYC bought bins of obsolete and quality rejects for parts. During the war, the store assembled them into trains.
Here's some of them:
The upper right car has holes in the deck for a 820 type searchlight housing. It's missing from the car.
Here's some more:
Madison made the flat cars by taking the bases off tank cars and boxcars and adding stakes. Floodlight car got extra holes for the light base. The cars were painted black and then had trucks attached.
They took the tops from the tank car and the box cars and mounted them on wood using wood screws. The cars were then painted black and trucks added with wood screws.
The gondolas were just painted black and then had trucks atatched.
On all these cars you can see damage to the lithographing under the black paint. They were probably rejected by Lionel and then thrown into bins were more damage occured.
Here's a cool car:
I bought this car from John Cox after his father Al died. It's shown in the blue covered 2nd edition of the TCA book on page 159. Might be the only surviving example.
These pictures are from Stout Auction when I sold most of my trains made after 1925.
