engine, engine number 1689E

Engine number 1689E has quite a bit of age on it. It is scratched and dented, and the light no longer shines out front illuminating the track when darkness comes.

My best guess is that number 1689E was built in 1940 or 1941. Old 1689E cam to me at Christmas when I was either nine or ten years old. I remember wanting a Lionel train for years before I got one. Along with the engine came a coal car, a box car, a tank car, and a caboose. The track was in the form of a figure eight and the transformer had a control that went from 0 to 120. I assumed that was in miles per hour.

In the ensuing years the system was upgraded with another box car, a flatbed carrying wood beams, a train whistle unit, crossing gates, two switches with remote control, and additional track to allow the train to go onto the figure eight or continue on a longer loop.

The train was always set up a few days before Christmas in the sun room which was somewhat out of the way. The front door to the house was through the sun room, but no one who knew us used the front door. If the front doorbell rang we knew it was a stranger, and we went to see who it was with some trepidation. This type of visitor was not very frequent, so the train set could be set up for at least the month of January.

I look at the sophistication of present-day toys, and wonder if we are not doing a disservice to the present generation by not allowing them to use their imaginations as we did back then. That engine did amazing things with me at the controls. One game was to run the train at as fast a speed as possible without causing a wreck. This took a cool hand on the controls since the speed in the straightaways could be much faster than on the turns. The usual scenario was that the train had to make 100 trips around the circuit to bring its valuable cargo to the troops at the front (This was during World War II, you know.) What was really neat was to do this with all the lights off except those on the crossing guards, and the light in the front of the engine. The track was laid out so that a portion of it ran under the couch, plus there were paper mache tunnels. If you lay down with your nose right next to the track it looked quite real as the train rocekted around a turn and headed right for you.

I won't bore you with all the variations, but two are worth mentioning. A spinoff on the above game was to put a blockade of Lincoln Logs over the track and then smash into them at top speed without derailing. If the train made it through then the next barricade had to be higher and bigger. The other game took a bit more finesse. The engine was attached to the coal car with an L-shaped pin that allowed the two to part cleanly without a permanent hookup. The idea of the game was to get the train running just as fast as possible. (Notice that speed was an integral part of these games.) When the train was about to give in to cetrifugal force and fly off the track you give it a final burst of power just before a turn, and if done just right the engine would part from the rest of the train and roll over and over across the floor until it hit the wall of the sun room. All those scratches and dents have a history.

The old 1689E isn't worth much money. It isn't worth anything to anyone but me, and I wouldn't think of selling it. If I had given it to my sons, or now my grandsons, they would have run it too fast, put blockades in its way, and rolled it off the track into the wall, and we can't allow that, can we?