Picked one of these up a while ago for curiosity’s sake, and I thought I’d do an in-depth review of it! After working on this one and looking at each part in depth, I can certainly see why Lionel’s first shot at HO scale didn’t do so well…
Lionel’s GP9 was a somewhat reverse engineered copy of Athearn’s GP9, which was made under contract, and was a decent seller for Lionel. After Lionel had a falling out with Irv Athearn, they had to produce their own models, and attempted to make something close to what Athearn made . They failed miserably. Their adaptation of the famous Hi F (rubber band) drive was absolutely horrible. It was a geared band drive combo, which had weak bolsters, unreliable gearing, you name it. Plus, the shells were way out of scale. Too tall, cab was wrong, etc. Just awful. Really the only successful copy of an Athearn product by Lionel was the “Husky”, their adaptation of the Athearn “Hustler”, which they made a reliable geared drive for. It may have been just a little better than the original. As a result, the Athearn/Lionel locos are quite collectible, and the later true Lionel production isn’t nearly so. About the only Lionel HO locos that are worth anything might be a brand new in the box, never been run item.
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