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Good Morning(or Afternoon),

Can anyone PROPERLY identify the years the following were included with Lionel steamers. I realize the plastic container variation was for 'smoke bulb' units(ie 1946-726) and if I'm correct(?), the first SP bottle was the brown glass variation. What I'd like to know are the years that one, the clear/'stamped on' bottle w/black letters, blue label bottles, round bottles with orange labels were used/included. I know the bulk of the PW period issued orange label bottles. Just not certain of start/end years for the listed variations. I have a fairly extensive PW library and cannot find any mention of YEARS used-just variation types. Tried googling as well but to no avail. I've seen, for instance, a 1952 Korean war 726 sold with both blue and orange label bottles. I realize they are most likely thrown in as eye candy. I'd really love to know what Lionel issued and WHEN.. Thanks!

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I do not think the brown glass bottles came first. I think the square bottles with black lettering printed directly on the glass came before them.

The 1947 catalog has this bottle pictured on page 37.

Browsing through the catalogs, they used the same picture or no picture at all, through 1955. So I guess we really cannot go by the catalog picture. 

Last edited by C W Burfle

Thanks for the response C.W.  I went through the catalogs, regular and advance, as well. Actually hat would be the '49 catalog. The '47 shows a generic bottle..The '48 shows a blue label , the '50 reverts to the clear label. Think, like some of the rolling stock, they use generic pix.   The brown one a much tougher find so where and when with that variation??  You would think this an easy answer but it's nowhere to be found. I'm trying to place the CORRECT bottles w/tampers alongside the proper steamers on shelve display. The period between '47 and approx..52, 53 has me most curious. When did blue label bottles  give way to orange? Guess set provenance and those org. Owners the only way to know for sure. A few months back, a guy was selling a LN boxed '48 2026 online and he had an orange labeled bottle with it. Clearly an add on-which had me thinking, clear bottle or blue label  and so on.................... well, won't lose sleep over it..

Last edited by reverseletter56

The round bottle is shown in the 1970 Lionel / MPC catalog. My buddy and I, have decided that the round bottles are late post war / early MPC (likely using Postwar left-overs). Then MPC used plastic pill containers with round blue labels that covered the entire lid.
The round bottle has an orange label. I think that probably means that the orange labeled bottles came after the blue labeled ones.

I have both the round bottle and the square bottle on cards (blister packs). I think the round bottle is MPC. The square one is postwar, I do not know the label color.

6-2911

 

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