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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 […]
WHEN ANDREW’S RAIDERS tried to steal the Western & Atlantic Railroad’s General locomotive during the Civil War, they certainly had no idea how many fantasy “great locomotive chases” they’d inspire in the decades to come. Lionel, for one, has had great fun with the concept. When the Lionel Corp. produced its postwar nos. 1862 and […]
SOME OF THE FINEST American Flyer accessories that the A.C. Gilbert Co. developed in the late prewar and postwar eras fit as nicely on O gauge layouts as they always have on S gauge railroads. For that reason, many of you should consider one or both of the animated Flyer stations being reissued by Lionel. […]
THE NEW REISSUE OF the American Flyer no. 787 log loader proves that, at least for toy train enthusiasts, the best things in life fit O and S gauge. Thanks to Lionel’s ingenuity, an accessory that began life as an S gauge item is now adaptable to O. I predict you’ll see plenty of these […]
A BIKER FRIEND TOLD ME that no one stops after getting one motorcycle, body piercing, or tattoo. I can’t personally verify his assertion, but I would amend it to read that no one stops with just a single Lionel log-loading accessory. On many of the traditional three-rail layouts that I’ve visited, the owner has a […]
LET ME SAY RIGHT OFF THE BAT, this is the sort of quality entry-level locomotive that Lionel should have come out with five years ago! But I’m not complaining, because it’s here now and it’s a winner! While Lionel has offered a few saddle tank locomotives in the past, this model is brand new. It […]
ONE OF THE MOST distinctive locomotive styles on any railroad – real or 1:48 scale – is the “Camelback,” also known as “Mother Hubbard.” The name “Camelback” came from the early days of railroading, when some steam locomotives were designed with their cabs atop the boiler. “Mother Hubbard” referred to locomotives that had the engineer […]
WORN DOWN BY THE Depression and the war years, the Virginian Railway embarked on a program in the 1940s to revive its aging fleet of locomotives using existing designs developed for railroads briefly owned by the Van Sweringen Brothers (Chesapeake & Ohio, Erie, Nickel Plate Road, and Pere Marquette). From these plans the Virginian produced […]
