New Lionel 21” car ride height Comparison

It looks like the whole part of the car below the belt line is missing on the Lionel and Kline.

The clear winner is Atlas!!!

The Atlas sure do look good !  I wonder how hard to lower the Lionel ? Looks like something's missing on the Lionel

Just from thsi video the Lionel car does not impress me.

I went back and looked at the catalog art and they look pretty close to what is pictured as far as under body detail.  I did notice the up cars have ladders in the photos.  I don't know these cars that well so I'm not really sure what should be under there detail wise.  The first run were awful but these def look much improved.  Looking at some of the other threads on these the 21" cars with skirting look great but the cars without it do have a lot of daylight under them for sure.  It does make me concerned as I have the UP and CSX set on order and both have similar style to your PC in the video.   I do think however from human eye level on most layouts it wont be an issue.  That's my hope anyway.  fingers crossed.

GVDobler posted:

It looks like the whole part of the car below the belt line is missing on the Lionel and Kline.

Odds are the "new Lionel car" may actually be an old K Line car.

While it's never been "declared". With the obvious similarities of numerous offerings in the last several years.

It's no secret that Lionel has aquired (has use of) a good amount of K Lines scale tooling.

RickO posted:

GVDobler posted:

It looks like the whole part of the car below the belt line is missing on the Lionel and Kline.

Odds are the "new Lionel car" may actually be an old K Line car.

While it's never been "declared". With the obvious similarities of numerous offerings in the last several years.

It's no secret that Lionel has aquired (has use of) a good amount of K Lines scale tooling.

It’s absolutely right that Lionel used K-Line tooling for a number of their better aluminum cars (and I wish they’d stuck with that instead of going over to ABS). But  that stopped at some point I think because a licensing right expired.

Anyway, the car depicted in the video is one of the 21” ABS cars and I assume is from the second run although it’s lettered Penn Central. There is only a little bit of detailing missing from the body and the prototype of this car did not have the sort of skirting that was built on to other streamline cars - for example various Pullman-built dining cars. I think that the below picture shows the prototype and as you can see the bottom of the car body had really minimal skirting at each end and the underbody equipment was practically in plain sight. Lionel’s representation of this car should be judged in that light:

RickO posted:

Odds are the "new Lionel car" may actually be an old K Line car.

While it's never been "declared". With the obvious similarities of numerous offerings in the last several years.

It's no secret that Lionel has aquired (has use of) a good amount of K Lines scale tooling.

The new Lionel cars should be molded in plastic, the old K-Line and K-Line by Lionel extruded aluminum IIRC.

Boilermaker1 posted:

Most disappointing is the complete lack of ladders and stirrups under the Lionel body. Thats much more glaring than the ride height.

 

You should have noted that the K Line car looks just as bad.

Hancock52 posted:

Not hi-jacking, but I wonder if that's the same Penn Central car that served me a cup of coffee just short of boiling temperature, on such rough track that it sloshed over the rim and burned my hand?

Oh, well, it rode at the correct height.  

why people continue to put their faith in Lionel is beyond me

SANTIAGOP23 posted:

why people continue to put their faith in Lionel is beyond me

Also, conspicuous in it's absence in the comparo is MTH.

MTH doesn't make a scale length streamlined car outside of the head end cars, so I'm sure there is a comparison.

I have a 4 pack o the first run of Lionel 21" cars and I'll be selling them soon. Just never run them. I did, however, order the full length dome car from the new catalog and have hi hopes for it.

Big Jim posted:

Boilermaker1 posted:

Most disappointing is the complete lack of ladders and stirrups under the Lionel body. Thats much more glaring than the ride height.

 

You should have noted that the K Line car looks just as bad.

The K line car is also 15 years (or more) old.

Big Jim posted:

SANTIAGOP23 posted:

why people continue to put their faith in Lionel is beyond me

Also, conspicuous in it's absence in the comparo is MTH.

Show me a 21" MTH passenger car and I'll put it in my comparo.

 I dont have enough unskirted cars to run a full comparo. I have an unskirted atlas diner that I'm working on, I'll pull that out tonight. And do a side by side with the lionel. 

Gonna need to look up some pics and make a few ladders though. There should definitely be one under the provision door in the middle. 

I was thinking about the Challenger set in the new catalog, but not if its also going to be naked like this.  Whats funny is, the top of the car is fairly decent. Nice interior, good window work, etc... but the underbody is just.... bleh.

OH NO... you mean the end door skirts are missing? !! Does this mean the same fate for the UP excursion cars?

J Daddy posted:

OH NO... you mean the end door skirts are missing? !! Does this mean the same fate for the UP excursion cars?

I can't tell whether you're joking or not! Anyway, at an earlier stage you did us all a great service by posting photos of the Lionel pre-production samples of three of the UP Excursion cars shown at York. Since (as must be obvious) I am as obsessive about how they will look as anybody I put together a collage of the three you photographed. They are not missing all skirting as you can see below but the treatment of the underbody detail is different to what we've seen so far of the new issue Penn Central diner. Specifically, in two or the cars (which I guess to be the baggage car and power car) it's partly concealed by short runs of skirting towards the car centers. This is not part of the catalog illustration:

How about some more comparisons as I happen to have three different versions of SP cars on hand? They are all observation cars. In the first one below, the car on the top is a Lionel 18" aluminum Shasta Daylight car and the bottom one is a GGD Scale Daylight car. Lionel actually tried to be true to the prototype in the Shasta Daylight set it made in that the observation car is ribbed whereas the other cars in the set are smooth sided. It also has no skirting so the undercarriage detail is exposed. I don't find it unsightly but this is a car that was otherwise very well made. The GGD car has full-length skirting and the prototype was from a different run of SP cars. Be aware that the photo perspective distorts the different lengths/proportions of the cars:

Next is a K-Line 21" car (top) compared with the GGD version. Again full skirting on both (the K-Line car is actually slightly longer than the GGD):

I think all of these cars are true to their respective prototypes in terms of the lower side details. And actually unless you are looking at that area directly side on (as in the OP's video) the difference in treatment is not very obvious.

Boilermaker1 posted:
Show me a 21" MTH passenger car and I'll put it in my comparo.

What concerns me more than the length is how high the car sits. 

Hancock52 posted:

J Daddy posted:

OH NO... you mean the end door skirts are missing? !! Does this mean the same fate for the UP excursion cars?

I can't tell whether you're joking or not! Anyway, at an earlier stage you did us all a great service by posting photos of the Lionel pre-production samples of three of the UP Excursion cars shown at York. Since (as must be obvious) I am as obsessive about how they will look as anybody I put together a collage of the three you photographed. They are not missing all skirting as you can see below but the treatment of the underbody detail is different to what we've seen so far of the new issue Penn Central diner. Specifically, in two or the cars (which I guess to be the baggage car and power car) it's partly concealed by short runs of skirting towards the car centers. This is not part of the catalog illustration:

these are definitely more favorable images.    I think the thing that makes it look so bad in the video is the angle form which they are filmed.  

jeremy ferrell posted:

these are definitely more favorable images.    I think the thing that makes it look so bad in the video is the angle form which they are filmed.  

A very knowledgeable fellow poster has pointed out that the two skirted cars above appear to be accurate as examples of ACF-built 70' cars and indeed are very like the NYC baggage cars shown on pp. 48-49 of the new Big Book catalog. As Lionel appears to be making two different sets of these plus a Vision Line version and in light of the samples, I think we can probably assume that they are producing accurate versions with at least some of the underbody detail covered by skirting:

I know, I know - can't rely on Lionel catalog pictures.  But we should see shortly how the cars recently delivered compare in the "high water" stakes in terms of height of body over trucks. 

Hancock52 posted:

J Daddy posted:

OH NO... you mean the end door skirts are missing? !! Does this mean the same fate for the UP excursion cars?

I can't tell whether you're joking or not! Anyway, at an earlier stage you did us all a great service by posting photos of the Lionel pre-production samples of three of the UP Excursion cars shown at York. Since (as must be obvious) I am as obsessive about how they will look as anybody I put together a collage of the three you photographed. They are not missing all skirting as you can see below but the treatment of the underbody detail is different to what we've seen so far of the new issue Penn Central diner. Specifically, in two or the cars (which I guess to be the baggage car and power car) it's partly concealed by short runs of skirting towards the car centers. This is not part of the catalog illustration:

How about some more comparisons as I happen to have three different versions of SP cars on hand? They are all observation cars. In the first one below, the car on the top is a Lionel 18" aluminum Shasta Daylight car and the bottom one is a GGD Scale Daylight car. Lionel actually tried to be true to the prototype in the Shasta Daylight set it made in that the observation car is ribbed whereas the other cars in the set are smooth sided. It also has no skirting so the undercarriage detail is exposed. I don't find it unsightly but this is a car that was otherwise very well made. The GGD car has full-length skirting and the prototype was from a different run of SP cars. Be aware that the photo perspective distorts the different lengths/proportions of the cars:

Next is a K-Line 21" car (top) compared with the GGD version. Again full skirting on both (the K-Line car is actually slightly longer than the GGD):

I think all of these cars are true to their respective prototypes in terms of the lower side details. And actually unless you are looking at that area directly side on (as in the OP's video) the difference in treatment is not very obvious.

Thats right! Thanks for reminding me... it was almost 2 years ago I took that photo, and these too. 

They are encouraging. I am not sure why the Penn Central car is missing the skirts and the end door.

Note the K line car does have skirts they are just black and hard to see...

Notice the mix of diaphrams on the cars...

This cars are sure the most anticipated release in a long time!

SANTIAGOP23 posted:

why people continue to put their faith in Lionel is beyond me

So well stated dude!

 Sure hope they didn't fork up the flag baggage.  Gotta love that Mitsubishi split unit ac

For balance, and because I forgot that J Daddy’s sample photos are from a couple of years ago, and in case anyone is unaware of this, there’s a parallel thread on these cars at https://ogrforum.com/...97#77734315973543297. There the only side-on photos of any of these cars I’ve seen posted anywhere can be found. They show the height over the trucks has been significantly reduced. 

Guys-- I just completed a comparison of an ESE coach car from the new set #2 (2565) to an earlier coach of this type (2566).  I happened to have gotten the earlier 2-car add-on pair to check on some cross-over design I was doing, as well as minimum radius issue.

So I coupled the new coach 2565 to the earlier coach 2566, in the PRR interlocking mockup.  As some have suggested, the new car was 1/8-inch lower than the earlier (by 6 scale inches).  The overall height of the new car was 3-1/2 inches over top of rail (=scale 14'-0" which is exactly correct).  The other few varied cars on the mockup were not quite this accurate, altho close, and I have still others not present.

I then noticed that the full diaphragms were not parallel.  The newer car 2565 was higher on its free end.  It has two different height trucks (the pivot height arms differ).  Having a life, I reversed the new car and moved on.  It appears to be a transition car.  Your mileage may vary.    --Frank   [Edit grammar: others (plural), car (not plural).]