I was browsing on the bay last nite and saw a few dealers selling Lionel HO rolling stock-boxcars, gons etc and was curious about them. They did not appear to be the post war type but later maybe from MPC era or more modern as most were still pictured in a window type box. Were they cheap starter type items or were they for more serious types and have maybe Athearn BB type quality? Just wondering.
Bruce
I had a gon and a bulk head flat from Lionel, ended up with them in a box of stuff I bought. I guess I would compare them to the BB kits of the time, or maybe like the Revell kits. I never had a Lionel loco.
IIRC, Lionel was the first to put out a camera in a loco, and it came with a small monitor, so you could watch the cab ride of your layout.
Mike.
They started making them in the 60s. They were more Life-Like quality than anything else - plastic wheels and horn-hooks.
A friend found a set of them in his attic. Pretty much what you’d expect from Lionel - a helicopter car, a nuclear waste car and a giraffe car. He though he was going to pay off his kid’s student loans. I took them to a train show for him and got $25.
I don’t know about the particular cars that you are asking about, but Lionel, rebranded products from various manufacturerers in HO over the years.
IIRC, some were Rivarossi, Athearn, including the “Hustler” industrial diesel, Bachmann which included the GS-4 in both Daylight and Freedom Train schemes.
I believe it was about 2003, Lionel imported 4-6-6-4 Challengers and Veranda Turbines. These were Quality Locomotives, Very well detailed die cast metal, Dual mode DCC/Analog DC with sound, Very nice running locomotives.
In the Challengers, they did Six versions. In Union Pacific, they did four, They offered Black/Coal fired/ No Smoke lifters, Black /Oil Fired/ with Smoke Lifters, Two Tone Grey with Yellow Stripes & Lettering/ Oil Fired/ with Smoke Lifters and My Personal Favorite, Two tone Grey with Silver Stripes & Lettering/Oil Fired with Smoke Lifters.
They also did Rio Grande, which were locomotives diverted by the war production board during World War 2, from a Union Pacific order. After the war the Rio Grande, returned the locomotives to the WPB, and they were subsequently sold to the Clinchfield, who converted them from twin smokestacks to single stacks. Lionel had separate tooling just for the Clinchfield versions with the single stacks.
Lionel produced all Six versions of the Challengers in two road #'s each for a total of twelve different locomotives.
In the Veranda Turbines, Lionel produced two versions, one with Silver Trucks, and another with Grey trucks, I don’t recall which were the early and which were the later versions on the prototype. Again Lionel offered Two Road #'s in each version for a total of Four different locomotives.
Doug
Unfortunately, too many people see an old Lionel, and think, “I just found my Retirement Fund” “I just paid off the Mortgage” or “There’s Juniors College Tuition”. Just being an “Old Lionel” doesn’t make it Valuable, condition is Paramount, those scrthes, broken cab roof and missing pieces DO AFFECT the value, never mind the Rareity of the piece(here is another case of many items being labeled “RARE” that AREN’T Rare at all) The Truly " Valuable Collector’s Piece" really is RARE, which is WHY it IS a Collector’s piece.
Doug
I remember in the 1970s Lionel had some HO products in the toy market but they didn’t sell enough to keep making them. I think I remember them being similar quality to Tyco.
Lionel has been in and out of HO at least 3 times. The first was back in the late 50’s and involved Rivarossi. They duplicated a lof of their O equipment as well - the exploding box car, the missile launching car (have to blow the box car up with something!), and the nuclear material car witht he glowing red light. And the section gang car that had bumper switches to automatically reverse.
–Randy
You could say Lionel has done HO “gauge” four times, if you count their OO scale (4mm per foot linear scale, running on same gauge as HO) pre-war trains. Then they did HO for a while in the late fifties, again in the seventies, and then some very nice products in the 2000’s.
Sorry if I missed someone already mentioning this, but I believe the Bachmann HO SP Daylight 4-8-4 was originally a Lionel product from the 1970’s.