how old is this train?

[skswift]

My father, now deceased, was a physician who was given a train set a piece at a time by one of his sales reps who sold Anaprox. The company that sold Anaprox was Syntex. Each car except the engine and caboose has the Anaprox name and Syntex logo on it.  I am just curious as to how old this set really is. I know it is older than 23 years because that is how long ago he retired. I suspect it is 30 or more years old. Any ideas?

[ACY]

About 20-25 years ago the drug companies stopped giving out the myriad of free stuff to physicians and pharmacists. So it definitely is at least that old. However it would not be more than 30 years old most likely in my opinion. It is most likely about 23-25 years old, unless your father got it after he retired, in which case I would think it might only be 20 years old. At any rate, the set is only of sentimental value, it holds no monetary value because it is cheaply made and has the name of a drug company on all the rolling stock. If you upload some pictures to photobucket and share them here, we might be able to tell you more information.

[skswift]

I have taken a picture of the set with my iPhone. How do I attach it to this discussion?

[jonathan]

SKSwift,

You need a photobucket or Flikr account to upload photos.

You can look up the set "Syntex" on ebay.  I just did, and there is an 'n' scale listing for this set.

Usually, there is no real historical record of model railroad equipment offered down through the years... unless the equipment is brass OR some private person has taken on the task of gathering records.  Some great folks in the Large Scale world have taken this on.  I don't know of any n scalers who do this.

The website "HOSeekers" can help with really old equipment... sometimes.

Regards,

Jonathan

[skswift]

Thanks Jonathan. I watched a video on you tube from Bachmann trains, and the HO scale he was using looked quite a bit bigger that this train...so maybe this is an N scale.

[doug c]

measure the dist between the backs of the primary (driver) wheels on the locomotive   that will very likely help ya define the scale !

ex. roughly 1.575" = G gauge !


imho

doug c

[Doneldon]

swift-

Measure the distance between the rails of your track and give us the number. That will permit us to tell you definitively and immediately what is the scale of your train.
                                               -- D