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I don't like having items (ok toys!) I don't know even the basic history on. Does anyone know anything about this train or rather who made it and when? It says Mego on the box and Plaything on the carriages. I'm coming up with next to nothing on google which to me suggests it was never worth writing about!

It is rather nice regardless but does take up precious cabinet room.

Ghosty will be your man I think, there is a link here about Mego Corp if it's the same toy company (?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mego_Corporation

That's a very nice looking set! Really strange that there are no results on Google which means it must be pretty rare.

I can't tell you much more about the model but, as I am also interested in trains, I think it was made in 1958 or 1959. That's because the New York Central oval on the box car was introduced on the real railroad in 1958. This is a test version with the "CENTRAL" bar below the centerline. This was superceded in 1959 by the final version where the bar was moved up to the centerline and "SYSTEM" added below.

What I find very interesting is that the paint scheme of the locomotive is not at all from New York Central! Their locos were two-tone grey ("Lightning stripe" scheme) and later black with white stripe ("Cigar Band" scheme).
The model's livery was clearly inspired from Baltimore & Ohio's "Capitol" scheme, also the number 88 would fit a B&O F3 diesel (in the photo below #87 is shown). Even the NY logo on the front looks more like the Capitol logo than NYC's.
Why Mego chose to replicate this livery, change the colour to red and then letter it all as New York Central I don't really understand.

Mego have links to so many 'Branded' toy companies which they used for the World wide distribution of their product lines. In the early Years of them becoming established, they would source toys from other companies and only show a simple 'MEGO' logo along with the 'R' in a circle for regidtration.

Something missing in Mego's catalogues were toy trains, they had not quite got into them especially in the 1940's and 50's. The train set shown by "Braintrust" is very interesting as the 'Playthings' name could be seen as a connection to Mettoy Playthings, but I am not aware of any documented evidence they had any cross-polination of products.

The actual model train appears to be a later production from 'SAKAI' of Japan who were known for making trains and rolling stock so close to original MARX items, they are often mistakingly described as Marx train sets, but in this instance the model shown only appears to be based on a Marx design copying their Santa Fe set.

Sakai supplied toys to the bigger retail stores such as Macy's and would make up train sets for them to market under the Macy name and I believe the set we are looking at was made by Sakai for Mego to market during the mid to late 1950's.

The 'Playthings' name probably coming from Sakai as well, not Mego or Mettoy.

Ghosthunter.

I guess that "Plaything" is a different company name or name of a product line, and not related to Mettoy playthings and Mettoy-Playcraft.

hmmmmmmmm thanks guys, interesting

Neat little set! Looks like a copy of a Marx tinplate set to me.

I liked it but I don't have the cabinet space to display it so I sold it.