A sad but True Story.....

[Ralphthe3rd]

Can you Fix it ?......ahhhh- NO !





Now (as Paul Harvey used to say)- The Rest of the Story.....

- do you want to hear the Sad- But True story behind the Indy Car body seen above !? Ok, ya see we live in Amish Country in Central PA, and there is this nice Amish Guy who runs a second hand store selling a little bit of Everything ! Well, this guy(named Adam) goes to Auctions every weekend and gets alot of stuff- for re-sale in his little store. Well suffice to say he got a battered and Very old, but semi intact, HO Slot car set. The box was falling apart and the contents were scattered and the cars were apart and missing wheels etc. Some guy(not me), comes into his store, see's the box top and offers him $3 for just the box lid, but he passes on all the contents, and just buys the lid for the cover art, and both men are happy. Anyway, Adam now thinks, that the remainder of the contents is Junk, so he has his young son toss it onto the Burn Pile behind his Shop ! (a few days pass) Well..... I end up seeing the Box lid at an Antique shop near me and Buy it, and inquire where it came from, the man who bought it tells me, and I try and make it down the very next day to the Amish Man's store, and ask him about it. He leads me out to the burn pile, and at the very edge of the pile, that is where I recover this semi Melted and deformed, T-Jet Indy Car body :o ...and I cried :cry:

PS- there is even MORE to this story, as I said before, I now own the Box lid....and here is a photo of the lid I pulled off the internet before I purchased my LID.... you may recognize this from an earlier thread I started a few days ago :(

[TuscoTodd]

And from the looks of it - it "was" complete with windshield and driver's head... :doh:

[vabchrog]

:violin: Very sad, I wonder what else met its doom

[dge467]

That is too bad! With all the T-Jets that were made back in the day, you have to wonder how many got tossed in the trash when people were cleaning out stuff from their homes.

[Ralphthe3rd]

Actually, the Really Sad part, is Not the deformed (orphaned)Aurora T-Jet Indy car, mixed in with the box, but the Penn Line Slot Set itself, which is Extrordinarily RARE ! It was only made one year(1962) by a Premier HO Train manufacturer, who sunk so much money into this first Slot Car set, and then getting endoresed by None other than A.J. Foyt himself !... That it's reported to have been the cause of the bankruptcy of the entire Penn Line Company in 1963 ! That my friends, is sooo Sad, to have a surviving set, destroyed by ignorance :cry:

[BIG E]

Good reading, Ralph - I love to hear the back stories on how people come into possession of vintage slot stuff!
The Aurora #1361 Thunderjet 500 "Gran Prix Racer" (yeah, Aurora left the "d" off in the product description) always looked cool in that turquoise plastic color, especially when the factory stripe and number is polished off (same with the Indy Racer bodies).
Unfortunately, it's obvious that yours has suffered heat FAR BEYOND cool, man! :>)
Do you think you can salvage the windshield and driver's head from it for use on a less "twisted" Gran Prix Racer body? If so - PM me. You can try slowly grinding away the body from behind the windshield until it comes loose, same with the driver's noggin. Also the body mounting posts can probably be salvaged for a future project, too.
I've got an idea - no guarantees - but you may get lucky in BIG E's basement again! -- Ernie :>)

[Ralphthe3rd]

Ernie, I've had lots of suggestions as to what to do to that Indy body, BUT, I think I'm gonna leave it as is....as a reminder. And btw- the Driver actually slumped forward a bit from the heat, as if he was Dead ! When I was led to the burn pile, the majority of the set musta been thrown dead center in the fire, as there, in a neat pile, were the track rails, like all the track was neatly stacked together, and just above them, was the coil and wire that was left from inside the powerpack, but nothing else I could recognise :( The Amish man- Adam, is the one that spotted this body off to the side near weeds, and he and another person verified, that they saw that T-Jet(intact) in the box before it was set ablaze ! :angry-tappingfoot:

[BIG E]

OK, gotcha. Hey, isn't it against local and state law to burn trash over there?
We get cited if we burn a pile of leaves! -- Ernie :>)

[Ralphthe3rd]

[Ralphthe3rd]

Something ELSE Escaped the Burn Pile ! I got an email from the guy that I got the Penn Line Indy 500 Box lid from(which is framed and on the wall now). And he told me the amish guy discovered something from the set that he didn't burn , but set aside and forgot about.... he said it was this Red Box thing. LOL- so I went to the amish guy's shop and he had been expecting me. And what he had saved, and spared from the burn pile, was the Set Transformer ! :)
So now I have the box lid and the Transformer from the Penn Line set. Oh, and btw, the 12v transformer Works GREAT ! :banana-dance: