2020 Frisco & NYC E8's

These are the only photos I have seen of the Frisco E8s (courtesy of Mr Muffin's Trains) and it's only one of the pair. Allowing for website color distortions, looks pretty good to me but I am no purist:

If memory serves, from when I was on the Frisco in 1963/1964, the lettering on their E units was gold, and NOT that color, whatever it is, on those Lionel units.

@Hot Water posted:

If memory serves, from when I was on the Frisco in 1963/1964, the lettering on their E units was gold, and NOT that color, whatever it is, on those Lionel units.

I typed in "Frisco E8" in Google and I come up with a few variations.  The gold lettering that Hot Water noted and RickO posted, is easier to find.  But I did find examples of something pretty close to the Lionel version (gold w/ white outline stripes and yellow lettering).  It looks like later they dropped the gold entirely and went with yellow lettering and stripes.  In any case, it's a reasonable model IF the red looks okay in person.  That's a big if.

Here's a link to a picture of some Frisco E's that shows what I'm talking about.

Go to website     condrenrails.com

Once there, look for Frisco, then diesel locomotives, then E-8.

Pretty good picture of 2006 with the white outline around the gold stripes.

Tony Marchiando

This picture is the best I could find.

@MikeH posted:

This picture is the best I could find.

Thanks for posting this and other photos. It doesn’t surprise me at all that Lionel chose one particular color scheme, which appears to date from the early 50’s, although exactly why this one is a question I think only Ryan K. can answer from his own research. Similarly I am not surprised if the gold is a little, well, dull or not what could have been done with a different/better metallic finish. Lionel’s rendering of such finishes has been disappointing if you like really shiny paint effects.

Actually the gold is not that far off if you judge by certain in service photos like this one (although obviously Lionel did not adopt the white in the Frisco name and in the band or stripe above):

But I have not seen this set in the flesh yet and I’ll reserve further comment until I do. Basically these models are only scaled down representations of the prototypes, and near perfect accuracy doesn’t happen. 3rd Rail would have done a better job on the finish but didn’t offer this line, AFAIK.

MrMuffins had a photo of the NYC E8 below.

@John Hon posted:

MrMuffins had a photo of the NYC E8 below.

All said, it's not a bad looking unit, and with some work it could be a really nice unit...  With the exception of removing the dynamic brake fan.

More details here:

Lionel NYC Legacy E8s

Nowak photo of the color test:

Thanks!

- Mario