Lionel 18" City of Los Angeles (6-20010)

For whatever reason, I don't recall reading too many posts about these cars when they FINALLY were released after many months (years?) of no aluminum passenger cars coming out of Lionel's factory.  People can be funny sometimes -- always being drawn to the latest and greatest.  And during that same time-frame, Lionel was also releasing its first 21" ABS passenger cars.  So perhaps that's why the last of Lionel's aluminum cars snuck in under everybody's radar screen, so to speak.

That's pretty sad, if the marker lights of the observation car are non-operational.    I suspect -- as is often the case these days -- it was another example of cutting corners to squeeze every last penny out of the manufacturing costs.  Looking back on things, it's actually amazing Lionel even delivered the last of their 18" aluminum cars at all.  Lots of us figured they'd just cancel the whole production run.

Last I recall, people still work hard for $500.  Yet we can spend it like it's nothing on this stuff today.  And when we get the stuff home, we're understandably very disappointed when features aren't what they should be.  Or worse yet, the product is DOA.  My new layout has a bunch of "operating" Lionel accessories, and I lost track of how many times we opened boxes that had been stored away for years -- only to find brand new items not operating correctly or not at all.  It gets old rather quickly.  We shouldn't need to have 6 of something in storage just to ensure we'll have three which we actually use on the layout that work!  

Perhaps somebody else who purchased cars from that last batch of aluminum passenger cars can comment as well.  As I recall, that production run included UP City of Los Angeles, Pennsylvania Senator, regular (i.e., non-Daylight) Southern Pacific, and Milwaukee Road Olympian (in UP colors).

Steve P posted:

I just bought the 18" Lionel City of Los Angeles passenger car set.  I am really surprised to find that the marker lights on the observation car do not exist.  They are just painted red dots.  The catalog description includes "operating marker lights".  I just don't understand why a higher end product would not include real lights.  Does anyone know why this was done?  I have not found a post about this subject.

Well, in fact a number of Lionel aluminum observation cars do not have “operating marker lights” despite the repeated catalog description that they do. In fact, I do not own any that actually came supplied with bulbs behind the markers; most simply relied on background light from the overhead light strips to semi-illuminate the markers. By contrast many Lionel observation cars have illuminated drumheads/tail signs. 

It’s not an easy job fitting lights behind the markers that just have plastic inserts but it can be done (as witness a recent thread here). I did not know that the set you mention doesn’t even have those. I agree that’s a not very nice surprise and disappointment.