A Surprise Package from Golden Gate Depot Today!!!

beautiful cars

Nice great looking.  I have seen a few of the Empire builder coaches in person in Portland, Oregon.

Rocky Mountaineer posted:

 

Out on the display shelf, the car has a beautiful satin silver finish, but it seemed smaller in length than I had expected.

 

As I learned today, prototype RPO's were often 60' in length -- not 70' as I was expecting.  Seems my expectations were set by other importers like MTH who often create RPO cars from their standard tooling where passenger cars are typically all 70' in length (i.e., close to 18").   Here are two more straight-on photos showing the difference a bit more clearly.

 

Now here's an interesting picture showing the GGD El Capitan baggage car (left) adjacent to one of Lionel's Texas Special 21" coaches (right) that I happened to still have on the display shelf from last week's Texas Special "first look" photo shoot. 

Aside from the noticeable differences in underbody details (as viewed trackside), skirting, and ride height... can you tell which car is aluminum vs. ABS?  My eyes can't.  But my checkbook can.    The finely detailed GGD El Cap aluminum cars are now coming in at roughly $279 per car, whereas the Lionel ABS cars are roughly $110 per car.   For the price, Lionel did a great job in achieving a very pleasing "aluminum-like finish" with their new ABS materials, as can be seen with the Texas Special set I photographed last week and in this comparison photo above.

David

  

David,

I think the Santa Fe went with 60' RPO's where they didn't have the baggage/storage space.

http://www.texasrrmuseum.org/roster/3401a.jpg

The GGD car is painted like the Lionel cars are now, rather than anodized?

Hope to see you running and enjoying them!

 

Next up for GGD appears to be Great Northern's Empire Builder, which has always been a favorite train of mine.  So I can see where the next dilemma will be:  reserve a set from GGD now, where price is currently listed as TBD?    But you just know that's gonna be a big hit.    Or perhaps wait until Lionel catalogs their Great Northern Empire Builder (produced with ABS) in the next catalog? 

David 

Santa Fe silver cars are one thing, but GGD painted cars are another, as far as finding engines with colors that match the cars. Hopefully,at such time Lionel makes EB cars, they will offer matching engines, (or else earlier Lionel GN engines will match the cars) and the color match issue for the Lionel cars won't be an issue.

breezinup posted:

Santa Fe silver cars are one thing, but GGD painted cars are another, as far as finding engines with colors that match the cars. Hopefully,at such time Lionel makes EB cars, they will offer matching engines, (or else earlier Lionel GN engines will match the cars) and the color match issue for the Lionel cars won't be an issue.

Agreed.  We take color match for granted.  But nowadays, nothing is a given.   GGD did indicate the possibility of re-running GN F7's with their Empire Builder passenger cars if there's sufficient interest.  So that's encouraging.  But the down-side there is you're looking at a HUGE outlay of $$$$ for cars and motive power to get color consistency, which can be very tricky with Great Northern green/orange/gold -- lots of room for color variation there.  

The recent mismatch of Lionel Wabash 21" cars vs. their E8's produced just over a year ago is disheartening and inexcusable.  Yes, I "get" the fact that products are often built in different factories these days.  But there should be a way to pace one's spending, without worrying too much about color mismatch.  I was VERY lucky that my Lionel Texas Special SD70ACe's (two powered units) from five years ago are a perfect color match with Lionel's recent 21" passenger cars.   Total damage will be roughly $1,700 once the StationSounds diner arrives later this year.  Going the GGD route, you're typically looking at $3K-$4K for a complete train (locomotives and cars).

David 

Rocky Mountaineer posted:

The recent mismatch of Lionel Wabash 21" cars vs. their E8's produced just over a year ago is disheartening and inexcusable.  Yes, I "get" the fact that products are often built in different factories these days. 

David 

But at least Lionel did make matching Legacy F-7s for the Wabash cars.

breezinup posted:

Rocky Mountaineer posted:

The recent mismatch of Lionel Wabash 21" cars vs. their E8's produced just over a year ago is disheartening and inexcusable.  Yes, I "get" the fact that products are often built in different factories these days. 

David 

But at least Lionel did make matching Legacy F-7s for the Wabash cars.

Hopefully, the Legacy FM Trainmaster was a good match too.  So what happened with the E8's, which were closer in production to the passenger cars than the other locomotives?   

But when you pick it up, you really know which one is the aluminum and which one is the ABS. They're not at all like each other.

I'm not a rivet counter and will never be one, but I very much prefer the aluminum cars. I'm sure it is much easier to add detail to the ABS cars. I think a substantial portion of the price difference is just GGD having high prices. Nothing wrong with that. But if you look at the pricing for Lionel 18" aluminum cars a couple of years ago, it was about the same as what Lionel is now charging for the 21" ABS. I submit to you that the 3" of aluminum just doesn't cost that much, and the new 21" ABS cars probably cost Lionel less than the 18" aluminum cars did. Lionel wants profit maximization. I know you guys are smart enough to figure it out.

Gerry