I HAVE A CONFESSION to make: I have a bias regarding steam locomotion. My favorite steam locomotives have the wheel arrangements 2-8-2 and 4-8-4. Everything else is “too big,” and the rest are “Weak Willies.” My bias began to crack with the MTH Premier line 4-4-2 Atlantic steamer (CTT, May 2001) and that crack has […]
I’VE PROBABLY evaluated more than 100 locomotives for Classic Toy Trains, but I can’t recall being as pumped up as when I popped open an orange and blue Lionel box and pulled out a black and gray New York Central SD80MAC. Yes, yes, I know. Despite being a die-hard New York Central fan, I am […]
WITH A LIST PRICE OF $649.95, the no. 31902 Pennsylvania K4 Freight Train set is by no means a child’s basic starter set. It’s an outfit for the grownup who wants to jump back into the hobby, but doesn’t want to go the entry-level $150 “New York Central Flyer” route. Included in this “return to […]
TO CROSS THE Rocky Mountains, the Union Pacific railroad was always looking for the next big thing. This eye toward innovation gave rise to such notable giants as the 4-8-8-4 Big Boy, the 4-12-2 Union Pacific, the massive DDA40X diesel, and the turbines. In 1952, the Union Pacific received the first of 10 4,500-horsepower turbine […]
IN THE 1950s Lionel’s New Jersey factory cranked out tens of thousands of F3 diesels, and, in the decades since, Lionel has reissued its hallmark diesel dozens of times more. F3s were no more a stranger to MPC, LTI, and LLC-era catalogs than to Bob Sherman’s gloriously drawn postwar catalogs. But this new Lionel F3 […]
THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD’S famous 4-4-4-4 Duplex drive T1 locomotive, designed by Raymond Loewy, epitomizes the rakish, spaceship look of industrial design in the late prewar years. If the locomotive’s outline looks familiar it should: its shape has been reproduced on thousands of calendars, artwork, and even non-railroad-related advertising. The Pennsy ordered two prototype Duplex-drive locomotives […]
TWO HEADLINES IN a supermarket tabloid: “Elvis returns to Graceland” and “Lionel makes all-new Standard gauge trains.” Which do you believe? A few years ago, the answer would have been neither. But hold on to your blue-suede shoes. While a living Elvis isn’t back at Graceland yet, Lionel indeed has made all-new Standard gauge trains: […]
IN MY MIND, the pinnacle of diesel locomotion is the General Motors SD40-2. Back when I would trudge through snowbanks in Wyoming and North Dakota to snap pictures of trains, it was the SD40-2 that got my heart pounding, rather than endless streams of GP-whatevers. The SD40-2 is big and burly. The long fore and […]
SEVERAL YEARS BACK, Lionel’s then czar of engineering, Bob Grubba, tantalized Lionel Collector’s Club of America conventioneers in Minneapolis with the hint of a new track system. When hobbyists asked him if it would be a solid rail system like that of Atlas O, he smiled and said, “Think more along the line of Super […]
AMID A SEA OF limited-edition, $1,400 locomotives, why should anyone be interested in this modest steamer? Well, first, it is designed to run through curves as tight as O-27 – and there are still plenty of operators using O-27, O-31, and O-54 curved track. Second, the tooling is new. This isn’t a lame attempt to […]
WHEN I FIRST SAW the ads for the LionMaster Hudson, I presumed that it was launched in response to K-Line’s similarly priced, scale-sized Hudson (CTT, July 2003). Not so. While all new like the K-Line Hudson and featuring TrainMaster Command Control, Rail Sounds, Odyssey speed control, and a wireless tether, the Lionel model is the […]
FOR THE PAST FEW YEARS Lionel has been making some very smart choices when capitalizing on its past. Offering models of never-produced items and reissues of desirable sets from the postwar era is especially attractive to many of today’s operators and collectors. A reissue of the no. 2527 Super O gauge missile launcher outfit from […]
