I’m a Lionel 50’s modeler and collector. In the post war era, Lionel produced the 671, 671RR, 681, 2020 all in Penna. RR. And then then the GG-1’s. But all the best known diesel sets don’t include any Penna. There was the GP 7 but my first set of diesels are the 8952/8953 made later. Any ideas about why this might have been?
Maybe because of all the popular steam and GG1, and there was also the streamline electric based on a New Haven prototype sometimes popularly referred to as a Little Joe.
I suspect that part of it was to do with colors- Lionel, like most other toy train makes, understood that a bright, flashy colored train was more likely to attract the interest of buyers. And while steam locomotives were almost always black, diesel locomotives were generally bright and colorful. That is, unless they were Pennsylvania diesels! The PRR did not exactly paint too many brightly colored diesels.
I imagine that there were a variety of factors- Lionel definitely considered producing a Pennsy F3, as I have a book with a picture of a prototype/mockup. I imagine it came down to something along the lines of what was going to cost the least to produce, while netting Lionel the most money. Lionel considered many, many railroad liveries, but only produced so many. Considering the Pennsy was featured heavily in the Lionel Line especially early on in years, maybe Lionel felt that they did not need to offer another Pennsy engine. Maybe Lionel simply had other ideas that they felt would sell better. It’s hard to know now, many many decades after the Lionel corporation left the toy train industry in 1969.
-El
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Funny enough, Lionel and Flyer EP-5 models are referred to as Little Joes, while actually the real EP-5s were called Jets due to their extremely loud cooling fans. The real Little Joes were Milwaukee Road’s EF-4 locos, built by General Electric for export to the Soviet Union (but they never left the country for obvious reasons).
That was the only thought I had, as they did have more steamers and then the whole slew of GG=1’s. I had a Pa. “Little Joe”, but after getting a GG-1 and a 2352 EP-5, I sold it. Thanks.
Thanks again, for your thoughts on this matter. I realized it was a question that will probably never have a real answer, but some of the reasons are credible
An F3 would have been a good idea but the GG-1 was already coveted by children nationwide. Every kid into electric trains then and every collector now it seems still has to have one. Bringing out a set of F3’s in the late 20th Century to match the postwar streamlined aluminum passenger cars filled the same need as the NYC lightning stripe and N&W Powhatan Arrow cars did the opposite way around.I suspect decision makers at Lionel opted for a modern road freight diesel with basically limitless possibilities for sets. Geeps and SD’s were the biggest news in the 50’s
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