I stopped by the local Fed-Ex depot today to pick up the two 21" StationSounds dining cars I pre-ordered some time ago from Charlie Ro: the Empire State Express livery and the Texas Special livery. Since I don't have an operating layout, these are just some very quick iPhone pics of the ESE car on display shelving. Sorry I can't demo the actual StationSounds effects in a video, but I'm sure somebody will do that here in the next day or two.
When I looked at the shipping cartons (both cars shipped separately), it wasn't obvious to me where to start opening the outer shipping box. Packing tape surrounded ALL edges of the shipping carton, so proceed with caution if your cars are shipped. Apparently these cars don't come in their own individual factory-direct shipping carton as the earlier StationSound diners did, so I suspect dealers are breaking these out of a possible twin- or triple-pack master carton. In any event, I opened both cars by carefully slicing both ends of the shipping carton and then one of the long edge corners... creating a long flap that opened revealing the dining car in a cellophane window-ed product box protected by a cardboard shim over the window. Again, I really don't understand why Lionel ventured away from the packaging that worked so well for decades. My only explanation is the bean-counters are now completely running the asylum. 
Anyway, without further ado... here is the ESE diner... a very nicely detailed car on par with the Texas Special 21" cars I purchased earlier this year.
I didn't purchase the entire Lionel ESE set, because I had snagged a great deal on the GGD 8-car ESE set last Summer. But I've always been a fan of Lionel's StationSounds cars from the TMCC days, so it seemed like a natural to add an ESE StationSounds diner to go along with the GGD ESE set. I knew the finish wouldn't match... and sure enough it's not even close. The GGD ESE cars have a strongly weathered, almost-copper tint to their finish; whereas the Lionel ESE cars are a bright clean silver finish. Purists will undoubtedly balk at this, but it's not a show-stopper for me. After all, I have Lionel's Penn Central passenger set on order too (from the 2016 catalog), and those cars have all kinds of color mismatches by design! 
Having seen photos of the ESE cars from Lionel's NYC ESE passenger set with Hudson locomotive earlier this year, I also knew that Lionel's ESE cars have the full-width diaphragms... whereas GGD's have the narrow-width diaphragms. Again, purists will balk at this. But if you can get beyond that, at least the height and width of the Lionel ESE diner matches very closely with that of the GGD cars. Even the couplers match evenly.
So yes... it's painfully obvious that these cars were produced by different importers at different times. But as I said earlier, it's no big deal for me. It was more important for me to have the StationSounds effects on such a nice train like this. I'm sure some folks might be tempted to extricate the StationSounds electronics from the Lionel car and move them over to the GGD diner. And that should work just fine. I'm just not inclined to do that these days. So I'll live with the color mismatch. 
Hopefully somebody posts a video of the audio effects soon. But for now, we know these cars have arrived... and enthusiasts can now complete the 21" passenger trains whose 4-pack and 2-pack arrived earlier this year. I did notice in Charlie Ro's recent "products just in" email that some of the the SSD liveries (i.e., Wabash, Rock Island, C&O) are already "sold out" at Charlie's store. So I guess the pricing games will begin at other dealers who still have those liveries in stock. 
Some things never change.
Nonetheless, it's nice to have these cars back again. The StationSounds Diners have been long overdue, and several beautiful Lionel passenger trains in recent years were produced without them. I'm glad they're back, since the sound effects always bring out a smile from visitors and train enthusiasts alike.
David
But I was able to simply "snap" that one back in place. On the Texas Special model, however, it appears the two plastic tabs holding these roof vents in place broke off the roof vent and are still lodged in the car's rooftop. So this roof vent won't just snap back into place.
Best to check the electronics too, 'cause ya just never know with these things. EVERYTHING needs to be checked nowadays with this jun... -- I mean stuff -- coming over from China! 
