question about older stainz

stevedenver

stevedenver

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i don thave a pic handy
but i have an old, dark brown cab#2, 2020 from the set that came with a green coach and a brown wood coach-it has no corner doo dads on the roof, has large stainz headlamps, no lighting socket, older small round loop, pinkish red chassis

the entire set was in quite good, but used conditoin when i purchased it-
the lamps on this stainz, both front and rear, had no lens's (and no reflector inserts which i think is normal for the period), and the lamp inside was painted white, which has yellowed a good deal

my question is did this loco originally have lens for its lamps? it seems unlikely that both would have been lost, as the ones ihave dealt with are a very snug fit-but thats only conjecture
anyone know?
thanks
 
hi steve if i remember correctly, it came with a white front lens & a red rear one.
it's been a lot of years since i saw one though.8|
 
Steve-

Are these the large lamps (like later Stainzen) or the early tiny ones? I am pretty sure the smaller first lights had no lenses.
 
Steve - I have a Stainz of the same era (exactly as you describe, but a black-cab No.4) in bits on my workbench right now, halfway through a decoder installation. Neither front or rear lamps appear to have ever had lenses, though they are both the large-diameter lamps. As Garrett said, the very early (13mm?) small lamps were all lens-less, but so were the larger ones for a while after they first started fitting them. I reckon yours is complete as supplied, though there is no reason why you couldn't fit lenses if you wanted to, they're still available as spares.

Jon.
 
The early "growler" locos had small lights, no lenses, inserts painted white; cost of a loco was about £17 in late 60's, if my brain cell is working. I had one;- came with a round vent on the roof. (back in the days of aluminium track). Alyn
 
Having a look in Greenberg's Guide, I'd say that your set is most likely of 1974-78 production - a 20301 set, Brown cab no.2 Stainz, brown 3000 coach (wood sided effect, low arch roof), green 3010 coach (metal sided effect, clerestory roof). Though some of the dates and details in Greenberg's can be a little contradictory, it seems to indicate that the lights only got lenses around '77 or so - the original very small lamps were replaced in '73/74, so any Stainz made between about '74 and '77 will have the large lamps but no lenses.

Jon.
 
My 1974 green Stainz has large lamps with a clear lens on the front and a red on the rear. I do remember a couple of guys who removed the red filter as they didn't like the look of a leading red light when the loco was running cab first. I knew I'd lose mine so its stayed put for the last thirty six years !
 
Dtsteam said:
My 1974 green Stainz has large lamps with a clear lens on the front and a red on the rear. I do remember a couple of guys who removed the red filter as they didn't like the look of a leading red light when the loco was running cab first. I knew I'd lose mine so its stayed put for the last thirty six years !
Click to expand...

That's interesting, David, as Greenberg's definitely implies that the red tail lenses weren't added until 1977; is your green cab a No.1 or No.2?

Guess it just goes to show that it's extremely difficult to be 100% sure about a lot of LGB stuff, as over the years there have been so many changes, overlaps of old and new parts as the factory used up old stock, and so on.
 
it has large stainz lamps, as i mentioned,

if i recall -only the #1 brown stainz had the red rear lens -i personally love the red lens versions
it is not a growler-but does have thrust bearings-has the square roof vent
it is indeed the set number listed 20301 with a soild non window box top and a side picture of a very debonaire bloke serving admiring women, sitting at his home bar, libations from his powerful and impressive....trainset! lol :thumbup:

to all and especially zerogee
many thanks for the info- i too have greenbergs and have read it and didnt catch the lens info provided
 
Happy to help where I can, Steve - I find the history and provenance of old LGB stuff both fascinating AND confusing.... ;)

Just to throw another spanner in, this lot has just popped up on evilBay:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/LGB-parts-/200581945704?pt=UK_Trains_Railway_Models&hash=item2eb39d9968 < Link To http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/LGB...mp;hash=item2eb39d9968
A mix of assorted old parts, but including an old dark green Stainz cab, No.1, with plug sockets and a red lamp lens!

Jon.
 
well perhaps it was also green #1 stainzs-and i know the blue train loco had red -

-thats an oldy in the ebay-separate socket insert in black plastic
 
Dtsteam said:
My 1974 green Stainz has large lamps with a clear lens on the front and a red on the rear. I do remember a couple of guys who removed the red filter as they didn't like the look of a leading red light when the loco was running cab first. I knew I'd lose mine so its stayed put for the last thirty six years !
Click to expand...
My dark brown ex-set 2020 dating from '72/3 has lenses, red on the back, clear on front.
 
So does my non-growler brown number 1 and red number 2 (150 years) one.
Perhaps it depended on the market?
 
While the Greenberg and Kalmbach guides are good, they are just that guides and were not always 100% accurate or were based on the information at hand at the time. I have seen some that claim (some say?) that only US market Stainz had red rear lamps for example. The LGB club here in the US made corrections to the Kalmbach one over time.

Another problem was LGB's on catalogs using old or pre-production photos often. For example, the 72/3 catalogs showed small headlamp Stainz models, well after the use of these. The 74/5 catalog shows large on the 2020, but small on the 2040 (steam) and 2010 (along with older cab and black two post whistle).

Now, with both of these statments, the 76/7 catalog/large poster of the turntable scene with the Pola shed and coaling station was the first to show the large red rear light.

I can also bounce this off a published LGB collector, once he gets an interesting spin-off set that neither one of us knew that existed, but somehow we found on eBay.
 
Often LGB used up production bin runs; well after a supposed change, therefore, there were often "overlap" versions with bits of earlier runs mixed with the current version. Alyn
 
Zerogee said:
Dtsteam said:
My 1974 green Stainz has large lamps with a clear lens on the front and a red on the rear. I do remember a couple of guys who removed the red filter as they didn't like the look of a leading red light when the loco was running cab first. I knew I'd lose mine so its stayed put for the last thirty six years !
Click to expand...

That's interesting, David, as Greenberg's definitely implies that the red tail lenses weren't added until 1977; is your green cab a No.1 or No.2?

Guess it just goes to show that it's extremely difficult to be 100% sure about a lot of LGB stuff, as over the years there have been so many changes, overlaps of old and new parts as the factory used up old stock, and so on.
Click to expand...
yes there were many variations...and the Ottley /Greenberg guides couldn't be 100% accurate on everything, back in the day when the books were made they didnt have email and computers to transfer files and data and so I am sure there are many (relative to today) innaccuracies in reporting ALL variations that were done especially from a period 1968/9-1975 just think of how the experimentation kept continuing with paint, body locations for livery/stickers,etc.
 
A freind of mine was involved in writing some of those guides, I would not say that e-mail and computers would add much to accuracy. There was a lot of factory input even in those days, along with several large dealers and collectors even here in the US that were documenting changes from the start of time Vs. buying a model today and not knowing all of its history (for example, I had to repair a 1972 era Stainz with a 1980s chassis, so a collector would notice that the wheels are wrong for a pre 1978 model).

So again, a group effort with a lot of checks and re-checks, and comparisons from everything by color, box, labels, paint and my friend also knew one person who classified things by SMELL. (gotta love Luran!!:love:)

Speed, maybe, but then a lot of this was done by notes or phone calls.

Today, we have the Gartenbahn Datenbank, which would be the next natural generation of this. A group effort with the added benefit of the computer age and a global access and input. Again, maybe not 100% accurate, but then what could be?

The added advantage of the computers is also group access to old publications such as the early catalogs on the LGB-Much webpage. Before, it would be trips to secondhand stores or bidding wars on eBay to buy bits of information. The true collectors will want the paper copies, and the info seekers can do with the web version.

If anything, the net has opened the information to more for sure.
 
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