Lionel B/W Caboose Question

There's a Lionel TMCC Erie bay window caboose, should be 6-19742, that has diecast trucks and two pickups, coil couplers. Frame is stamped steel. There is at least one other TMCC caboose from some Southern Pacific set. If you search for "trainsounds caboose" on the bay, you can find other cabeese that look like they have metal trucks, but plain couplers.

Thx, Mike!

These Lionel baywindow cabooses evolved starting in the later 1990s, which is when the cabooses mentioned by the OP were made. They got even better. After that many added not only the diecast metal trucks, but red side marker lights (instead of white), and - what I think is a cool feature - rear red flashing strobe lights. They're a good deal heavier than earlier baywindows.

Lionel also made several of them with TMCC sound systems, and in addition some with a TrainSounds sound systems that included engine sounds. There were 4 cabooses made with the TMCC sound system. One is the No. 19890 Santa Fe, cataloged in 2001, shown below. These TMCC cabooses have TMCC crew talk sounds, as well as squealing brakes, diecast metal trucks, red side marker lights, rear red strobe flashing light, as well as electrocouplers. A Pennsylvania version, No. 19889, with the same features, is below that. There were also two other versions of these TMCC cabooses, both cataloged in 1998, the 19742 Erie and the 19749 Southern Pacific (part of a set). These cabooses also have a pretty neat feature of being able to "talk" back and forth with a TMCC Railsounds engine. with back and forth crew talk between the caboose and engine.

There were also the TrainSounds baywindow cabooses. These had either steam engine sounds or diesel engine sounds, depending on the model, and also crewtalk. These were good to put with engines that had no sound systems. The Southern Pacific No. 29835 shown below is an example of these.

I think most of the other baywindows (non-sound versions) made in the past 20 years or so, although perhaps not all, have the diecast trucks and red rear strobe lights.

Thanks, breezinup, for additional info. Reminds me a little bit of how Lionel MPC “snuck in” the trio of HQ Geeps, NYC, MR, and Wabash, with little or no fanfare about how well built they were. These cabooses are kinda the same. Low profile, until compared with the previously issued B/W cabooses. What got me thinking about this was the folowing - FARR PRR features a 1D tank car with metal sprung trucks; FARR GN 1D tank car is plastic trucks. Interesting (unsettling) discrepancy in top of the line sets’ features.

FARR sets 1  2, and 3 were made with regular trucks/wheels.  Sets 4 Southern and 5 PRR all cars had sprung trucks.  Many, many MPC and LTI Bay window caboose had metal trucks.

Thx, aussteve. I wonder if pressure from Lionel collectors brought about the change from plastic to metal trucks in the later FARR sets?

At one time, the undercarriage was available on the Lionel parts website. Years ago, I bought a dozen and have used them to upgrade b/w cabooses that I’ve intended to keep long term. An easy upgrade. I’ve also replaced plastic trucks with the metal trucks.

Steve

@Mark V. Spadaro posted:

Thanks, breezinup, for additional info. Reminds me a little bit of how Lionel MPC “snuck in” the trio of HQ Geeps, NYC, MR, and Wabash, with little or no fanfare about how well built they were. These cabooses are kinda the same. Low profile, until compared with the previously issued B/W cabooses.

There are a number of examples of this Lionel "feature-creep," gradual upgrades where over time they added additional features. A good example of this was the (then) revolutionary TMCC/Railsounds GP9s, first introduced in Fall of 1996, the first engines which Lionel marketed to, among other things,  introduce TMCC and RailSounds to the O gauge community at large. (BTW, the sound systems on these engines are still considered some of the best).

When introduced (the first two GP9s were a NYC lightning stripe and a Southern Pacific black widow), besides TMCC/RS, these had diecast trucks, plastic fuel tanks, plastic pilots and magnetic couplers. Over the next 3 years (and thereafter), additional features were gradually added to these engines (including additional road names, of course). By the end of 1999, these GP9s had now added diecast metal fuel tanks, diecast metal pilots, crewtalk and towercom, finished cab interiors with crew figures, and electrocouplers. These are nice hefty engines, and with their additional weight are better pullers, too. Some of the most bullet-proof runners around.

Hi Mark.  I used to have these two prototypical NYC bay window cabooses.

http://www.lionel.com/products...dow-caboose-6-17633/

http://www.lionel.com/products...dow-caboose-6-17652/

Doug