Hey guys. My Uncle just let me borrow a red diesiel. It has no markings on the bottom, no Lionel, MTH or K-Line markings. It is numbered 18917 on the sides and it must be part of The Soo Line because it says SOO on it.
I don’t really need to know but I am just curious.
Thanx guys,
Colin
Greenberg’s 2003 guide list it as a Lionel “Soo Line” type NW-2. Made in 1993
Really ? I thought it was a postwar. Thanx anyway.
Colin
The 18917 Soo NW-2 switcher came in the 11741 Northwest Express set, shown in the 1993 Book 2 Lionel catalog. The other cars were a gondola with cable reels, log dump car, ore car, searchlight car, and work caboose. Maybe you can borrow them from your uncle, too?[:)]
Yeah!!! He has the exact same cars! He has a huge loop going around his sun room wall! He has a white SOO LINE cable car and all the other ones! To me they look a lot older than '93!
He has hundreds of trains. He has his own buisness in Toms River, NJ Cleaning out peoples attics and doing odd jobs for them, he finds boxes of trains!! They let him keep them, too!
Hey Colin,
Sounds like you should be helping your uncle on the wekends. Who knows, a few trains might come your way.
Bert and Mary Poppins aka Nick
Colin, when you get more familar with the trains, you’ll be able to tell postwar from modern right off the bat. Your engine should say Built by Lionel molded right into the shell of the loco on the front sides right below where the number is printed.
This loco has a single DC can motor (evident when you pick it up and look at the underside) which a postwar unit would not have had. It also has plastic truck sides where as a postwar version would probably have been metal. The other give away would be the “thrumbtack” style coupler which Lionel MPC invented in 1970. Lionel LTI went with a black thumbtack over the silver one.
The cars also all have the fast angle wheels on them, indicating they have to be newer than 1970. And the ore car was not in the postwar Lionel lineup… that’s newer tooling that was made in 1983 or 1984 I think. Plus all of the cars will have the date on the car: BLT 1-93 (or whenever the cars were made) with the word Lionel directly below. The plastic on these cars is unpainted (as were many postwar cars) but the plastic is also lighter… you can tell this once you’ve been in the hobby for a while and handled postwar and modern types of cars. The Soo Line gondola in the set is also not very opaque… light glows through the car sides. The trucks on the rolling stock, though plastic as some postwar cars, are a different style than the postwar ones - plus the thumbtack couplers.
But this set was only cataloged for one single year, so although it isn’t rare, it certainly isn’t as common as other sets like The New York Flyer Steam Sets.
I would but he has a 17 year old son and a 6ft tall 13 yr old son!
That rules that idea out!
Hello Colin! It sounds like you have a very generous Uncle. Maybe more Trains will be coming your way. Who Knows.?[:)] …Keith