Thanks again for the input everyone- please, don't panic! I'm not mad, and would much rather keep an original paint job if I felt I could. The 134 set is probably going to stay almost all original. Something you can't see so well in the pictures is that all three cars have pretty significant rust that has ruined almost all the paint on the roofs. I'm debating if they should be stripped, de-rusted, and repainted, or if I can happily ignore the rust. There are also a few points of bad rusting elsewhere on the cars, but I'm going to experiment with trying to get it off since it's not nearly as bad as those Ives/Lionel cars.
And about those cars. Wayne, I think they look worse than they are, structurally. They're awful to look at, sure, but believe me I have seen stuff much uglier that may well have been restorable. I may well need filler putty, but those cars were some of the first things that were reveled to be in the collection and it was love at first sight, condition be damned I just loved the size of them, and the 6 wheel trucks. If I restore any of the rolling stock, they're probably first in line.
Becky, thank you so much for the reckless encouragement, I am feeling bolder by the minute. I may just start crunching numbers on what I would need to buy to complete the Lionel/Ives cars.
The 262E isn't as much of a heartbreaker as it seems, because I have a gorgeous 249E that runs as good as it looks. The only thing wrong is a broken pilot that I think resulted from a nose dive in days gone by. It's gunmetal grey, and has a matching tender- not a whistling one, but the two of them look great together. The two locos are more or less the same machine, just in different color schemes and with different tenders. I do want to see it run, but that's not happening any time soon, not with that frame! I could get the 'guts' working but honestly at least it resembles a locomotive right now- as soon as I start taking it apart that frame is going to bust into a million pieces, and I won't be able to reassemble it.
Today I decided to put it up on a beam, with all the freight cars, in the room where I do my train repair work. From a distance it doesn't look so bad.
This evening I finished up working on the 252's motor and reverse switch. Had to replace all the wires except the one coming from the pickup rollers-I know folks reccomend heat shrink tubing on the original wires, but honestly I don't think it was worth salvaging the old wiring. When I finally post those darned pictures I took today, you'll understand possibly why I decided to go that route. I replaced everything with solid core copper wire that I have on a big spool. Reverse switch works perfectly, and it looks nice and clean. It was pretty warped like they usually are but I used my "trick" to de-warp it, and had no issues there.
The only thing I regret is that I didn't get out there earlier, I might have had time to start cleaning up the shell.
Just to reiterate- the 134 set is probably not getting repainted- the loco definitely is staying original- the cars, only if needed. I'll share more detailed pics, they are a bit worse than the pictures suggest.
-Ellie
