Here is a red plastic motorized O gauge handcar, put out by Louis Marx & Company. The handcar is O gauge and runs on AC power. The red plastic body is in really nice shape, with ALL FOUR of the fragile little handles on the car ends and ALL FOUR of the black handles on the walking beam being fully intact. Try finding a handcar today with both the body handles and the walking beam handles all intact - it is no easy feat! The two figures are reproduction handcar men, but they are from quite some time ago, as they are the earliest repro men, done in cast metal and not plastic. The men are hot glued down by their feet, as these early castings did NOT "expand" once you pushed the foot pins through the hole in the handcar deck like the plastic ones do. The unit is the version of the handcar motor with TWO center rail pickup shoes for better operation. They always did only run in one direction.
As I try to do with all motorized units, I am including a short video of a bench test of this handcar. If you just sit it on the track, the motor does NOT have enough power to get it going. This unit likely saw a lot of service, and parts of the motor are just worn, and very likely would need to be replaced. You can see that if you "give it a push" you can get it to run, but it never wants to go just based on powering the rail up. I sold this car earlier, but it was returned due to not operating. THOUGHT I had described that adequately in the listing, but perhaps not. SO TO MAKE THIS ABUNDANTLY CLEAR, THE UNIT DOES NOT OPERATE PROPERLY. IT CAN BE MADE TO MOVE BUT it WILL NEED REPAIR AND PERHAPS REPLACEMENT PARTS TO GET IT GOING OF ITS OWN VOLITION. YOU ARE BUYING IT AS IS AND WITH NO GUARANTEES AS TO OPERATION. So please, if this concerns you, just bid or not based on the unit NOT working currently. A clean, unbroken NOT working red handcar is worth my asking price.
Now for the train collector folklore. The last photos are closeups of the two identical (except for color) men. You might recognize that person - it is President Dwight Eisenhower! As legend has it, when they were designing the handcar in Girard, PA, one of the model workers got hold of some of the IKE "Victory Pose" plastic figures that Marx made (the one with his arms both raised). He used that to make the handcar men, largely because it was easy to take multiple figures and make up the articulated figure. Well, Louis and IKE were close friends! So when Louis saw the prototype of the handcar, he loved it, but commented "You'll need to put a railroad worker uniform on the president before we make these". The model workers didn't have the heart (or maybe the guts) to tell their boss that they had not selected IKE deliberately because it was him, only because it was convenient! And the rest is history.
Anyway, photos from all 6 sides, plus some closeups of important details, with a yardstick in the shots for size reference. Priced reasonably, with only actual USPS Ground Advantage or Priority Mail shipping charged to the winner!