More LIONEL 2015 C2 Catalog Updates

These SD40s are going to be awesome! I have 3 preordered (both Chessies - B&O and 1 Clinchfield).

Lionel should be able to milk this tooling for years to come. Just about every railroad had SD40s. I preordered just one Clinchfield in anticipation of a future run of Louisville & Nashville SD40s. I like to MU with 2 locomotives.

I can't wait to see the finished product!

Thanks Mike, this helps a lot! The orders are flowing in and those passenger cars look fantastic! 

Passenger car shots look very cool.  I could give a rip if the car is constructed of plastic or aluminum.  Lionel has some of the best passenger and attendant figures.  Finding uniform clad attendants is a challenge.  Will you make them available in a blister pack?

i am very glad that all of your newest rolling stock have provisions for the kadee draft gear box!  Thank you!

I must say, I'm very impressed with the passenger cars.

I can't wait to get the UP Excursion Train next year. 

Shoot, I won't be at York this October...

Hope someone can snag a video of the Empire State - that's the primary piece I did pre-order for this year.

Regardless, the cars already look fantastic!

Looking at those photo's of those extended shells with tiny 4 wheel trucks  reminds me of a stretched out limo.

Nice to look at once in a while but not something I want to own and see everyday on my layout  

IMO, Scale 72' (18") cars just look better.

Joe

Mike R, for the SD60E pilots, might they be semi-fixed like your newer ES44's?  Thanks.

I ordered the log cars last week.  Great to see the added details.  Did you ever think about selling just the trucks as a set minus the log for those that might want to use their own logs?  My wife has been replacing all the dowels and plastic logs on my cars with cutting of real wood from our trees.

Thank you Mike for the update, which is much appreciated. I won't rise to the bait of your "tell the difference" comment about the finish on the 21" cars  - I just wish Lionel well with this project and look forward to arrival of my Texas Special set.

Is it safe to assume it's a typo on the later pages that refers to a 4 pack? 

I'm assuming since the details on the main page say a single and a 2 pack, that is all that is really being offered.

Thanks.

-Dave

With those SD38/SD40 specific nose details it will be possible to produce the DT&I SD38s with the nose bells.

Andrew

Mike,

The 21 inch cars look great!!

I'll be in the Orange Hall on Wednesday setting up the Korber booth. I'm going to sneak away and come by your booth and get a close look at the ESE set, which i have on order.

See you there,

Alex

I like the passenger cars, they look great.

Since the REAL streamlined passenger cars were NOT made out of aluminum, but stainless steel, I'm wondering why the new models are exactly like aluminum, including the shelf they are photographed on? I would think the models should represent polished stainless steel.

Those full width diaphragms look good. Any chance they will be offered as a separate item. I have cars those would good on if they are O scale.  Leon

They look excellent!  Matt

Few updates to questions;

SD60E's will not have the new kinematic pilots like the SD40's and SD38's. The SD60E's will have the pilots mounted to the trucks themselves, hence they will negotiate on O31 curve to accommodate all layouts O31 and greater.

Disconnect Log Cars; These will be sold as a single set (2 disconnects and a log) and also a 2-pack (4 individual cars and 2 logs). We recognize (and sorta hole) that folks will find a "log" from outside, as it will create some awesome variety in the use of these cars. However, to make the car set complete, we decided to tool the log, so anyone who doesn't have the though of supplying their own logs would have something to drop onto the cars themselves. The chain detail will be fragile, but only aesthetic (and is a really nice touch too!)

21" passenger cars; Some folks read too much into things. I made the shelf/car comment due to all the Negative Nancy's out there who have commented they didn't like our decision to move to plastic, looking at the cars and the shelf, if you didn't know they were plastic you would never know! LOL. These are early samples, for our testing, not finished production models. RELAX! 

The diaphragms will follow the prototype, so if the prototype had full width diaphragms the model will, narrow width on the prototype will yield narrow width on the models. 

Purplepapa; The diaphragms have been available on our Replacement Parts site for the past 6 years. You can find them here;

https://www.lionelsupport.com/...09176006&match=0

The two part numbers are as follows;

6209175006 & 6209176006.

Thanks for the feedback!

That's clearly right but what is being offered by Lionel is what I realistically expected. Getting a stainless steel paint finish on plastic (or die cast metal) is a specialized job and would necessarily increase cost. The same goes for plating on plastic, which I suppose is the other option apart from using polished metal panels.

The finish shown in the photos is to mye eye the same as on the recent Legacy Burlington Zephyr set, which is paint on metal to simulate polished metal. It and other things (like window placements) about this first issue of 21" ABS cars make them representative of the prototypes, not scale near replicas.

The most obvious difference to me is the stainless steel fluting. Here is the Texas Special observation car in aluminum as originally produced by K-Line with the polished fluting (picture posted by Brian - PTC - I think a few months back):

I have have the last Lionel version of this set and the finish is a good approximation of polished stainless steel. I'd hoped Lionel would come up with something very similar for the ABS cars but I wasn't convinced it would happen. Looks like it won't but I understand the limitations.

Anyway, from what little I can see of the interior details in the photos they look different from the old K-Line based designs.

Thanks for your help Hancock52. I checked out the Lionel site and unfortunately all I was wanting was the diaphram itself to add to my already built 2 rail O scale passenger car.

Leon

Actually it was Mike Reagan himself who answered your query although I had the same thought about the replacement parts when I read your post. These diaphragms are actually quite easy to work with, fortunately.

Mike- First off thank you for clearing up allot of questions that are being asked here on the forum. I appreciate the confidence you are bolstering up here and helps immensely before I hit the pre-order button.

One question I had is the height of the car body looks like its on stilts?

I presume that these are stand in trucks for development of the car bodies?

Thanks for clarifying in advance.

The manufacturers do what they can to make cars plastic passenger cars realistic, but IMHO there's no way to make painted plastic look anywhere as good as aluminum for representing stainless cars (other than perhaps the very expensive processes Hancock52 mentions). Paint on plastic can't replicate this:

Major difference from the painted plastic finish shown below: 

Thank you for your update and feedback.  Your attention to the customers is much appreciated and positively noted.

Bryan

You might want to take a real close look at Athearn HO Santa Fe "F Units", with their "stainless steel" side panels. Plus, from the test photos published some time ago from Atlas on THEIR O Scale Santa Fe F7 units, they sure seem to have "gotten the look" of stainless steel also.

I read what Mike stated as indicating that the painted plastic would look like metal. Full stop.  That is, the new cars will look "like aluminum" which is the best that could be done previously. 

Folks seemed satisfied in the past that aluminum, for some strange reason,  looks just like metal, in this case verisimilitude for stainless steel.  Thus Mike's comment, to me,  was meant as an analogy or metaphor, not a statement that the prototype was aluminum.

I've heard about Atlas O's efforts, which are laudable. I was just following up on Hancock52's comments: "Getting a stainless steel paint finish on plastic (or die cast metal) is a specialized job and would necessarily increase cost. The same goes for plating on plastic, which I suppose is the other option apart from using polished metal panels."

I think Atlas putting a few polished panels on its very expensive F units, or Athearn doing some little HO engines, is far different from what it would take to cover the entire exteriors of multiple 21" passenger cars. I'm sure the cost would put Lionel's cars way beyond the affordability threshold.

It would be far cheaper just to use aluminum, I'd think. But then, I still don't understand the arguments as to why they can't continue to produce aluminum cars.