Early Lionel O locos with GOLD handrails 150 and 700 series

[early0electric]

It's an orange 800 repainted grey to match the Armored Loco. I also have a green 203. Your 601 -602 cars came from Jim Lyons. He bought Lou's stuff. I remember when Jim was auctioning off his trains due to a financial problem.
 

 

Here's an 800 with no lettering anywhere, wide wheels.
 

[Terry]

Jim sold some trains to invest in his business. I was fortunate that my business was doing well at the time and I had to chance to get some great stuff.

Is the green tank the same green as the two cars?

Does the orange car have clipped corners on the roof? I have an orange/orange roof 800 wabash boxcar with clipped corners.

 

That car seems to be the earliest boxcar I have. It has lettering on both ends and wide wheels.

I was going to post a picture of a Standard gauge dark green 14 boxcar with no lettering, but the computer won't recognize the camera card. I'll see if I can restart it and get it to work.

[Terry]

The card failed. . . 

Here's the 14 boxcar. The last picture shows it with the dark green 820. The 820 was coated with linseed oil by Al Levin to stop the paint flaking so it has a glossy finish.

 

 

 

The story on the boxcar is the Harmony Creamer company bought 24 cars from Lionel. Then the creamory mounted tanks inside, and put decals on the cars. This is from a late 1950s TCA quarterly article based on records from the creamory. The creamory did not modify four of the cars.

This could be one of the unmodified cars from the creamory, it could be an extra car made by Lionel to insure they had enough cars to fill the order, or could be something else entirely. No way to tell now.

When I attended Joe Algozinni's recent Zoom session, they were discussing cars Lionel made as specials, and a subgroup of specials made from unassembled parts. The Parker Hanefin 6464 car was an example shown. A PH distributor bought plain boxcars and added decals to them. This 14 boxcar is the oldest example I know of from within the unassembled specials subgroup.

An aside here: The TCA desert division in 1996 bought  parts for a motorized unit from Lionel and then lettered them for preconvention specials. Paul gave me one of the shipping cartons that held the parts a few months ago.

[early0electric]

Mines an olive green 203 and the one unlettered 800 posted does not have clipped corners as shown. My clipped corner 800's are WABASH with maroon roofs, double stamped with wide wheels.
 

[Terry]

I have 3 clipped corner cars. All are Wabash - orange roof, maroon like the one you just posted, and brown.

Here's the brown roof one:

 

Comparison of brown and maroon roofs:

 

The maroon on the left is glossier, and you can really see the difference in person.

[early0electric]

Brown roof, maroon roof always hard to tell, especially from pictures. I've got 3 brown roof 820's. 2 are shown in Greenberg's newest O gauge book.