Recently I was on Ebay looking as some of the New York Central cabooses being offered for sale. Two that I noticed were Lionel’s #19726 grey lightning bolt wayside caboose and Lionel’s # 6-9174 green wayside caboose.
To get to the point, were there any of the NYC lightning bolt cabooses in real life? I can’t remember ever seeing any. I can remember seeing a lot of the green ones. I grewup during the '40s and '50s across the street from the NYC tracks which ran between Niagara Falls, Rochester, and Boston.
This is a good question. I have a lot of photo stuff and some old videos of the NYC and I think the lightening stripe caboose is a bit of (well done) whimsy.
I am also in the market for a NYC bay window caboose. I saw the ones mentioned in the first post on E-Bay. I have also seen NYC bay window cabeese painted in the red/grey Pacemaker colors like the boxcars. Anyone know if these are real colors or fantasy?
Checking Sweetland’s two volumes of color guides to NYC equipment, most NYC cabooses were either tuscan or jade green. There were five 20100-series cabooses (the old-timey, wood-sided caboose with a low coupla that I believe MTH still offers) were re-worked with either aluminum sides, or sheathed sides and were painted in the red and gray for Pacemaker service. There were also a few jade green done up with a white safety stripe (some with safety slogans, sone with safety slogans and an Aerotrain outline) at about window level.
You can’t go wrong with any jade green caboose (there also seems to be a variety in placement of the logo). The 7802 looks about right, though in the color reference, the reds seemed a bit darken (more boxcar brown) than red. As for the red/gray, the book only showed the one style (represented by the MTH no. 7802 body) that was painted for Pacemaker. But don’t get too wrapped around the axle about it - literally, anything is possible to have been done. I’ve got red/gray, green, yellow (Marx), and red NYC cabooses. The only NYC caboose I ever passed on was a black boom car for a crane (hey, it was supposed to be emergency equipment and I doubt if any railroad would have painted it black). I think MTH made the crane (black), but I bought a K-Line boom car (green). Or the reverse.
The lightening striped, while fictitious, would look good with the Lionel F3s.
I just bought a steel side Lionel tuscan for my F3s and a Lionel wood side, again Tuscan, for my . I have been contemplating a purchase of a lightening stripe one for the F3s as well.
Bob,
I really like the first two MTH cabooses I listed. Price isn’t too terrible and they are readily available. I also like the red/grey bay window from MTH that I listed higher up the thread, so I will probably go with that one too. Too bad the Lionel jade green is so dang hard to find. I’ll put a standing order in with Bill Oberst at SVC Trains for the Lionel caboose so that if they get one I’ll have it reserved. Thanks a ton for all your advice. BTW…I’m also a new subscriber to Classic Toy trains [;)]
Yep…I have the ABA F3s coming from MTH. That grey lightning stripe WOULD look spectacular with it. From what I’ve read, those cabooses came with a Lionel set…“It was produced in 1995 as an additional car to go with the #11744 New Yorker service station set.”
The Central steel sided bay window units were either oxide red (first units, early on), or Jade/Century green (majority/later years). The Lightning Stripe and PaceMaker are very attractive schemes that were not used on the real railroad. One of the Morning Sun books on NYC rolling stock mentions the oxide red/green schemes. Photo’s of PaceMaker consists usually have the wood sided end cupola cabin cars.
LS car was an add on to a “combine” set that Lionel did. Original set had a few freight cars and a combine baggage/passenger coach in the consist. There were additional freight and passenger cars issued to round out the set. The caboose was one of these offerings.
I have the new NYC green Bay Window coboose & I will caution anyone on these cabooses as the wires in them, for lights & flasher & smoke unit, are so thin in diameter that all the wires in mine burnt to a crisp in only a week ! They need to be replaced with a larger diameter wire for sure if running in TMCC. I was not running mine in command at the time & they burned up. The dealer said I must have derailed it & burnt the wires up, but I didn’t even have a switch on my layout at the time nor did it ever derail. It is a great looking cab though, just no lights or anything in mine now.
Yep…that’s the one. Note his comment under it’s description: “(current issue price for the series is $89 and all are sellouts)”.
For $89 samolies I can get TWO of the MTH cabooses. I can wait for SVC trains to get one for me at a discount. That’s the trick to buying this stuff…finding the lowest price [;)]
With these NYC bay windows it seems to be a seller’s market.
I asked if they were based on REAL paint schemes used on these cabooses or just fantasy paint schemes. I wonder if maybe MTH has some pics we don’t know about that show these colors on these cabooses?
Dep : no, after what the dealer said I just figured someday I would try to rewire it myself. Now another friend of mine, Spankybird from the forum here, actually had his burn up to the point where it melted the roof of his caboose ! I got mine on sale at the time for I believe 66 dollars ! Now other than him & I, I haven’t heard of anyone else having a problem with these.