Follow the restorations on my work bench as I repair popular model trains.
The Lionel Prairie 2-6-2 #224 is an O gauge locomotive produced in the first year of Lionel’s comeback in the postwar era, 1945. Like Lionel’s first year back, this is also my first attempt at restoring a Lionel O gauge engine. Luckily, the inner workings share a similar design to my more familiar American Flyer engines and the transition was easy. It was also refreshing to have great parts and wiring diagrams available.
Welcome to my first in a series of blog posts that will follow the restoration of various relic toy trains. In this inaugural kickoff, I will tackle the American Flyer #322 smoke in tender (SIT) Hudson locomotive with a timestamp in the boiler shell of 1947…
During my first American Flyer train restoration of my childhood #302AC engine, I did a LOT of research in order to learn what made these relics chug. Through all my Googling, one model kept popping up that I knew I needed. The Northern, or as American Flyer refers to it, “The Challenger”, which is arguably the flagship of the Gilbert American Flyer roundhouse.
The days of setting up my fathers trains in an upstairs bedroom had almost vanished from memory until those trains were transferred from my parents basement to my attic. My childhood memories of these American Flyer trains weren’t of them chugging around a Christmas tree or in a spare bedroom, but that of a screwdriver in my hand taking them apart in hopes of resurrecting them. During my first “restoration” of these trains…