When Lionel first introduced their modern day, scale sized ore cars back in 1984 (two cars: Soo Line and PennCentral) I thought they were kind of neat and bought two of each. Two years later, in 1986, they produced two more: Canadian National and Northern Pacific. I bought one of each of those. They also did a "Lionel RR's Club" car in 1986. The following year they did a Pennsy RR and a Milwaukee Rd car. They also did a train set that included an ore car, painted gray and lettered for the Lehigh Valley. I was able to locate one from this set and traded two of my first year cars with the owner of that car.
Point I'm making is that I bit into the idea of collecting ALL of the ore cars, as they were introduced. I now own all of the ore cars that Lionel ever produced, including a series starting in 1988 for the Gadsden Pacific Division of the TCA.
Recently I decided to catalog all of my cars, now numbering 70. I found all of my cars in the latest Greenburg price guide, except four cars named for "Copper Range" RR and five cars named "New Jersey Transit". These are the "mystery cars" i am talking about. I had boxes for the Copper Range cars with Lionel catalog numbers given but they are not listed in the Greenburg book. and the catalog number was only listed on the boxes, with road numbers: 2025, 2026, 2027 and 2028 lettered on the car sides. The builders date of 2005 is lettered on the cars, themselves.
The other "mystery cars" I have are five lettered for NJ Transit and are in five different colors, each with the name of a yard on the railroad. Unfortunately I did not get the boxes for these cars and the road numbers are: 9125, 9126, 9127, 9128 and 9129. These car numbers are also not listed in the price guide and I can find no reference to a Lionel catalog number, anywhere. However there is a very small box listing the builder's dates of 1998 on the cars themselves.
So here is the "mystery" about these cars. Do any of you know where and for whom these cars were built? Any other pertinent details about the cars? I'm planning on selling the whole collection, as I'm heading for retirement, and I would like to be able to supply as much information about them as possible.
Paul Fischer
