For me, it has always been a love at first sight with the Santa Fe F3 Warbonnet paint scheme. So, from that perspective the Lionel 2025 catalog did not disappoint. Frankly, the catalog is impressive. At 252 pages it is about half the size of the Sear's Christmas "Wish book" from the 1960s. I hope the new battery sets are a huge success, they are attractively priced and should be easy to set up and run. All the big retailers need to carry those sets. For a price of $149.99, this should give those Lego sets a run for their money.
The artwork on so many of the items are specular. Angela Trotta is a gift that keeps on giving. Wow, what spectacular artwork.
I have one of her puzzles framed and hanging in my train room. Angela is an American Icon.
Then, you get to the Bob Ross artwork, this covered bridge is specular. I am sure it would look great in a Christmas layout.
I could go on, but I back to what I really like in the 2025 Catalog is the Santa Fe F3 set:
It does not appear until page 88, so kinda buried. Its not a Vision line, but just a LionChief +2.0. It has a ton of features, that are described on page 92. It has a price of $899.99, which is a lot of money, around the price of a cell phone.
I like this set because of the paint scheme, and it fits nicely on my layout which has O36 and O54 curves.
CharlesRo has it at $749.99 on the early buy price, my friends at Eastside Trains in Kirkland will be close to that, so this is probably going to be my big purchase for this year. I still work full time; I drink the free coffee in the office and save over $700 by not buying coffee at Starbucks. Lol
The love affair for the F3's go back a long time, Lionel offered a Santa Fe F3 set in 2000. I have attached the pages for the set in this post. I also included the cover for the Catalog, which was by Angela Trotta. The set was an ABBA Fe set with 7 Aluminum passenger cars. It retailed for $1999.99, which was way beyond what I could afford in 2000. CharlesRo had the set listed for $1599.95. The picture below was from Charles Ro advertisement in CTT.
Lionel also offered a Kansas City Southern F3 AA set and a four-car aluminum passenger set. Charles Ro offered them, the F3 set went for $589.95 and the passenger cars for $289.95. I think we can use those numbers to compare the Santa Fe F3 set today. Over the 25 years, the F3 AA went from $589.95 to $749.99, an increase of $160 over the 25 years, plus you get smoke now, plus the ability to run the trains with Bluetooth. Some will argue that the Pullmor motors with Magnatraction are better, that is like trying to decide if New York Pizza is better than Chicago style pizza.
The passenger cars are materially more expensive. The four pack went from $399.95 in 2000 (Ro had them for 289.95) while in this catalog, they are going for $1099.99 (Ro has them listed for $774.99 on early buy).
I was told several years ago that there is a lot of waste in manufacturing aluminum cars, so that may be a reason for their expensiveness. We do have options for passenger cars, so this will be an option for many to mix and match sets. Also, very easy to use the F3 with a freight consist.
I hope this helps, Dave
