My new Red Comet

One of my favorites.

I have the Lionel (modern) Classics version. A favorite. Mark

Good find. Like you, I would question the seller's claim that it's all original. The loco's cab looks to have been repainted. The cabs on the Commodore Vanderbilts were prone to deterioration. Is the seller a member of TCA? If so, they are required to accurately represent what they sell and disclose any alterations made to it. The cars look great, but almost too good to be original.

Nice 114 station!!

I'm with BC on this one.  Good resto, but not original. 

Mitch

One of my favorites! I have the LCT remake from the MTH Tinplate line from 5-6  years back.

This train came from the Ken Kelley collection - I had not heard of him but I gather that he is a somewhat well-known collector.

The train was sold by Route 32 Auctions outside Indianapolis.  Some items in the sale were marked and identified as repaints - so while they did not explicitly state that it is original, I think it was implied since it was not marked as a repaint.

Another clue is look at the condition of the motor - looks **** near mint to me - this doesn't look like its seen much action and I don't know any restorers who can make the motors look that perfect.  Its possible that this set just never saw much action.

To be perfectly honest - if the quality of the repaint or resto is such that we are having a spirited debate about it being original or not, then that's the type of restoration that I don't mind having in my collection.

I thank you for all the input.  I still have suspicions but I am also still open to the idea that this COULD be orig.

Paul

My personal opinion is that the set is original but the cab appears to be repainted. The color of red is not a perfect match between the cab and boiler. It is an original cab casting though because the repro’s all have really bad gapping between the joints with the boiler.

It’s tough to tell with the cars though since there were only a couple photos of them without much detail shown.