Lionel's Vintage K4 Steamer: From 675 to 2035 and Beyond!

[@modelrailpreservation]

Excellent video as usual! The 2035 has a special place in my heart, as my dad's old 2035 was my first repair back in 1987, when I was just three years old. I still have it of course, it still runs on those fixes I put in at 3 years old, a broken wire, which I fixed by tightly wrapping the bare wire lead around the soldering lug. 37 years later, that wire is holding nicely. That engine has spent the last 37 years being run extensively, though I did replace the sheet metal trailing truck with a die cast 2025 style trailing truck back when I was a teenager. Love that engine! The Torpedos have a special place of mention between my dad and I. He had his cousin Billy's old Torpedo, but lobbed it at his brother and damaged the boiler back when they were kids, so my dad and I joke about not throwing any Torpedo engines at people now.

[@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks]

Moral of the story: Never throw a Torpedo! :-)

[@lionellover61]

The early 675 and 2025 locomotives are some of the best products Lionel ever produced. That is why so many of them are still around and running today.

[@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks]

Absolutely!

[@billintex001]

Congrats on the K4! Excellent postwarrior hands down. I'm a 675 man myself. With your mantainence abilities it will run forever. Like any good postwar should.

[@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks]

Thanks!

[@mdeange3]

I enjoyed your video. I learned and appreciated the history of the full size engines, and the O Gauge Lionel counterparts. Excellent! 🙂

[@jimciancio9005]

Try using a sharpies for the missing paint or chips. Then go over with black shoe polish and the proper brush for shoes! Its blackened bees wax and restores the original finish on top of blending in the sharpie touch ups. Just FYI if you're looking to keep the original paint and not doing something permanent! Wax is easily removed by a solvent if necessary. Hope this secret helps out some collectors who want to make their not so great looking trains looking like new again! 😊❤

[@ronalddevine9587]

Great video. Pity that Lionel never got it right. A.C.Gilbert did a great K-5 both prewar and postwar.

[@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks]

Flyer did some good things.

[@stevenpeaketrainsandstuff3682]

Lovely old locomate mate, it cleaned up beautifully. Another option for cleaning up old plastic is a product called Longlife Self-Shining Floor Polish. Just apply it with a paint brush, it helps to recondition the plastic and doesn't harm paintwork or decals etc. Steven.

[@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks]

Thanks for the tip, Steven!

[@chiconian49]

Good job. My first Lionel set is pulled by a 1947, 2025 with an unpainted stack and Baldwin drivers. It's not easy to work on.

[@johnknippenberg-LandmarkYards]

I enjoy running my 2-6-4 2035 set. Good runner and smoker, 6466W whistle tender. I also have the Torpedo and the Torpedo Jr. Nice maintenance tips too.

[@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks]

Thanks for watching, glad you enjoyed the tips!

[@carldebellis7310]

Awesome video!

[@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@FrancisOConnor-ch1us]

Very informative article. Thanks for the great content.

[@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks]

Thanks for watching!

[@guitarshredderjay9423]

I love the 225E, I have four of them

[@Jscola30]

Excellent! The 2035 starred in a few Gumby episodes, notably Train Trouble, kinda trippy. I have purchased the new 675 set and am eagerly awaiting it.

[@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks]

That's great to hear! I hope you enjoy it!

[@Jscola30]

@@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks i also liked the bull frog snot trick. How long to dry?

[@caseyvillemodelrailroad3877]

Great vidio, like the show.Thanks for the morning coffee...

[@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks]

You're welcome, have a great day!

[@wayneantoniazzi2706]

Great video Mike! I've got one of the 2035's myself. I call it "The Blockbuster" on account of it's chunky good looks! There seems to be a lot of these coming on the market now and at VERY reasonable prices and for solid Post-War reliability and longevity they're hard to beat!

[@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks]

I think you're right! They're a solid choice for a vintage locomotive.

[@Allosaurus-Productions]

The Lionel lines 675 is being released but with Bluetooth controls!

[@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks]

10:26 in the video

[@johnandrus3901]

Very nice! I have the 2025, with the unpainted smokestack. It's a real good runner. You use a good process to clean-up the locomotive and touch-up the scratches and it looks so much better. As an aside, the T1 could run anywhere east. The S1, 6-4-4-6, referred to as The Big Engine, was the one that couldn't proceed past Crestline. They were supposed to save it, but money got tight and the scrap value was too hard to resist. Too bad.

[@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks]

Thanks for nthe information!

[@wayneantoniazzi2706]

Obviously the PRR (and the NYC for that matter) were in the transportation and not the historic preservation business but their wholesale scrapping of locomotives they were ostensibly proud of a few years earlier strikes me as being a bit "penny-wise and pound-foolish" in reverse, if you follow my meaning. Saving the S1, and a T1 would have affected the PRR's bottom line very little since scrap value would have been only a fraction of what the locomotives cost to build. Same with the NYC and their Hudsons. The PRR already had an historic collection at Northumberland PA and the NYC could have started one, possibly with the assistance of Alco. But it's too late now. And of course hindsight's 20-20.

[@colestrains1]

My favorite postwar locomotive

[@turdferguson4124]

The American Flyer K5 Pennsy Pacific actually has road number 5698 cast into the keystone number plate on the smokebox front. Gilbert got it right with a prototypical model wearing the correct road number for the prototype on which it was based.

[@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks]

Thanks for pointing that out!

[@kriscarver-seaboyer9204]

I was given a 2035 some time ago. I’m not interested in originality for this engine, so I removed the boiler and painted it with a black spray intended for wargaming miniatures- a product called Chaos Black, which is hands-down the best black spray paint I’ve ever used. Nice consistent finish, supposedly flat but actually a very slight semigloss. Matched the original finish nicely (I only masked off under the cab window where the stamped number is).

[@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks]

Thanks for the tip!

[@LionelPostwarMPC]

Mike, thanks for a great video as always from your channel. Good info & tips! I always liked the Lionel K-4 / K-5 (Lionel's own service literature calls it a K-5) steamer. But the American Flyer Prewar K-4/K-5 model in 3/16" O-Gauge 3-Rail is a better scale model with better details IMHO but it's rather unknown when compared with the many Lionel K-4/K-5 models were. Why did Lionel make the wheels backwards being a 2-6-4? Doesn't bother me because to me these are all toys and not really meant to be 100% scale models. Nope, it doesn't bother me. But those rivet counters do go nuts over these details 🙂 LOL! Looking at the latest Lionel catalog one can see the legacy of the Postwar K-4/K-5 lives on!

[@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks]

Because Lionel reused the 225 drive and casting, there was simply not enough room under the front pilot for a proper size four-wheel truck. All of the homemade conversions I have seen have you used American Flyer undersize wheel sets in order to make it work.

[@OldLow1361]

Is it possible to modify the leading truck by swapping it with a Jr Hudson to make it a proper pacific?

[@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks]

There is VERY LITTLE space under the pilot. I have seen articles in CTT where it's been done, but it requires a lot of grinding and the use of undersized American Flyer wheels

[@IndianaNorthWestern]

Nice little trick I'm gonna share here with yall, buy some 3-5 mL syringes, you can take the metal tip off and use it as an applicator for grease, leave it on for oil. To get the grease in, you'll have to pull out the plunger and just squirt it in, with oil you can take the metal part off and just suck it in, makes life so much easier

[@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks]

Good tip, thanks for sharing!

[@HighballMachineWorks]

Do you have any tricks on how to improve the smoke output on a postwar steam locomotive, I have a postwar 2018 that was converted to smoke fluid by the previous owner and even with letting it idle with the throttle on the ceiling it doesn’t produce as much as some of the mpc locomotives.

[@wayneantoniazzi2706]

The previous owner MAY have wired the smoke unit incorrectly. Check to see if the smoke unit wire is connected to the track power lead wire, either independently or where the track power wire is soldered to the e-unit. If your smoke unit wire is connected to the engines ground wire it won't get all the current it needs to function correctly. I speak from experience, I wired a smoke unit "bass-ackward" myself once!

[@HighballMachineWorks]

@@wayneantoniazzi2706 there’s nothing wrong with the wiring, it does smoke in all e-unit positions, it just doesn’t produce a lot of smoke like you’d see on something like a General or Berkshire jr.

[@wayneantoniazzi2706]

@@HighballMachineWorks OK, then the only thing I'd suggest is retro-fitting it with a Post-War type smoke unit heater assembly. Those WILL work with liquid smoke, usually 5 to 6 drops is all that's needed for good smoke output. Post-War smoke unit rebuild kits are available from various sources however I've used the ones from Henning's Trains in Lansdale PA with excellent results. But just to reiterate the smoke unit has to draw track power BEFORE track power gets to the e-unit. E-unit switch position has nothing to do with it.

[@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks]

If you're brave, you can try swapping out the resistor in the smoke unit for different values and see what you get. WARNING: you MIGHT get a blowtorch!

[@HighballMachineWorks]

@@wayneantoniazzi2706 so long story short, the Hot wire has to be soldered onto the same side of the e-unit as the center rail pickups, and then postwar logic says fully metal smoke unit body screwed/riveted to metal frame =common ground. Sounds about right?

[@ASPEST2017]

The 2025 is a classic I have both the 2025 and a 238E

[@TexasTedS]

Because traditional Lionels were never meant to be scale models, I believe there's room for discussion... It's always been my opinion that the 225E with its burly boiler, Elesco feedwater heater, and compound air pumps above the left rear driver was inspired by the NYC H10 Mikado; at least more so than by the Hudson. (IMO, the Hudson more clearly inspired the 226E with its four-wheel trailing truck, providing Lionel with a traditionally-sized alternative to the 700E.) No matter its lineage, Lionel's attempt at the K4 is a postwar classic! Great video of one of my favorite Lionels! Oh-- one more question-- Your 2035 seems to run very smoothly in the video. Were you running it on DC for purposes of the demo? (I think you discussed this in a previous video.) Thanks!!

[@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks]

Nope. It's running on AC so I can use the air whistle. If I were running on DC the whistle would sound continuously.

[@TitanicKid]

So regarding the number on the boiler plate. I've seen hundreds of the 5690 & catalog number boilerfronts, and on extremely rare occasion one with the PRR lettering on the front, but I've heard of a variant with the number 2500 on the front. Is there any evidence to the existence of this?

[@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks]

As far as I know, that is not original.

[@plunkervillerr1529]

Marx guy here, I enjoyed plenty such.

[@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks]

Thanks!

[@LuisFlores-cx8py]

I dont think i jeard about the 2026...?

[@ToyTrainTipsAndTricks]

The 2026 is not a K4 model. It is a different boiler.

[@jimciancio9005]

Awesomely Informative and Entertaining Video Bravo!!! My first and favorite Lionel was a 2035. I believe that Gumby rode on back in the first episode or so of Gumby and Pokey? 😊❤