[DaleHCook]

I plugged it in (in our driveway) and, not surprisingly, it didn't work.

Dan -

That is never a good idea. You should always do some basic repairs and troubleshooting before powering up a set for the first time in order to avoid possible failures that may damage additional parts. The first repair is always replacing all of the wax paper caps with plastic film caps, and replacing all of the electrolytic caps with new electrolytics. That eliminates the parts which are most likely to fail and whose failure may cause additional damage.

When powering up a set for the first time you need to control the chassis voltage in a way that allows you to see problems without causing damage. Many people use a dim bulb tester, which is inexpensive and effective. I prefer to bring the line voltage up slowly with a variable autotransformer equipped with output AC voltmeter and output AC ammeter. I own an fairly inexpensive thermographic camera, which plugs into my cell phone, and uses an app on the phone as its display. With the chassis mounted on a chassis stand I can look at the components above and below the chassis as I slowly increase the line voltage. That lets me easily see if anything is running too hot.