Lionel Add-Ons

Don't forget the Repro Scale Freight car set of 1991 with the add on Lackawanna Reefer car and C&O stock car.

I was wondering if this was also a practice of K-Line and/or MTH?

Yes for K-line and recently for MTH with their 6 car freight sets.

Just about every high end set had add on's and it gets crazy sometimes.

All the FARR sets had add on cars, in fact #2 the UP had 2! All the warhorse sets had add on's with the SP having a 2 pack add on. Most service station sets as well.

All the premium sets from the past 10 years also had add on's. The hardest to find right now are the GATX cars for the sets made.

I kind of wish they wouldnt do this add on thing anymore.

I never thought about it before, but ZW is right. There are add-ons for everything! Going back to the MPC days, there were add-ons to the aluminum and baby Madison passenger car sets. I wonder what year it all started?

I dont know if this counts, but even today there are add-on SETS of cars to be added on to starter sets. Thomas, NYC, PRR, Santa Fe, etc.

Going the opposite way, this topic got me to thinking of how the MPC era would include 6464-type boxcars as part of premium sets. The collectors of those sets either had to pay through the nose to someone who was selling a split set, or buy the whole set and break it up. Come to think of it, they may have done this with the reefers as well as the 9700 series boxcars. Maybe other cars too that I can't think of right now. In this way there were complete sets to buy as add-ons to freight car collections. I wonder if the new Motor City set can be considered the same way? I've read a few posts here where folks might not want the CSX diesel, but are really only after the auto-rack cars. I wonder if Lionel figured on this and made the cars as part of a set just to sell some added loco's?

It seems this little marketing trick has been handed down over the years as a sure fire way to generate added sales.

How many of you, like myself, have been stung by Lionel producing RTR set add-ons without the simple courtesy of informing us that the engines which came with those original sets were incapable of pulling those new add-on cars?

Case in point was the popularity of Lionel's Polar Express set which led them to developing and flooding the market each year with additional add-on cars knowing fully well that the first PE locomotives couldn't handle pulling those add-ons without doing irreparable damage to those original PE set locomotives.

So what did Lionel do to remedy that situation - they redesigned the PE locomotive to handle the load of all those add-ons they'd produced without informing either the original set owners or future PE set buyers that the locomotive motor, transmission and even chasis was revamped. They did not even make the redesign so that a new motor could be retrofitted to the original PE chasis since they'd redone the frame too.

And what was Lionel's response when I contacted them concerning buying a new frame and motor assembly, "We only sell the motor, not the frame - BUY A NEW PE LOCOMOTIVE." Talk about a company driving a wedge between themself and customer loyalty.

Is it too much to expect Lionel to state in their catalogue that additional add-on cars can not be used with original PE sets?