New Lionel PRR N5B Caboose

Sean,

  Very nice !!!

Alex

Hope you ENJOY it! Looks great.

The one I ordered from Trainworld Shows the trucks having Leaf Springs, not Coil.  Further, the trucks are painted tuscan just like the caboose itself.  The single coil spring trucks look a little weird to me.  The trucks look to be Arch Bar style which would be more appropriate on an earlier Cabin Car rather than the N5B.  Just my 2 cents.

Chief Bob (Retired)

http://www.kohs.com/PDFs/PRR%2...oject%20Brochure.pdf

Not sure if this helps, first pop up on search.

Sean, thanks for posting. I think its a great model. I am going to purchase one with a black roof. I think Lionel did a good job with these.

nice looking Cabin Car

Sean,

  Very nice!

  Tom 

The N5 / N5B cabin cars in the new Lionel catalog have gotten my attention.  It's not like I need more cabin cars, but no one has made an N5 or N5B (non-brass) in a very long time.  And you can't have enough cabin cars.  At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it. 

George

Looks great...can't wait for my LIRR!

Sean,

     Great looking cabin car. I am waiting for the one with the train phone antenna from the 2014 V II catalog.

JohnB

Thanks for posting the photos. The crash posts and grab irons are nothing to write home about but for the price it doesn't seem like a bad model overall. I'd like to see a photo of the Kadee mounts and how the trucks are put together. 

I will definitely mount Kadees on the two I have ordered and give them a quick weathering job. The more I look at the trucks the less I like them. It would be interesting to compare them to MTH's version (which are very nice in 3 rail). I also have a set of PSCs waiting to be used on some other project.

in the meantime I have been dragging this one around, which I believe is a Walthers kit riding on PSC trucks:

Bob, I am now wondering what happened with the trucks too - here's Lionel's catalog pic:

Norm you could take an SP out of a set and turn it into one of these. Norm has the eye and talent to do such things.

Pretty awesome job, Norm. 

I had to look twice to make sure it wasn't real.

George

Check both my PRR and PC Buggies, no scale stacks??  Sounds like a phone call is in order to see if they are available.

SAM

I got my PC cabin today.  Thee were two small bags in the box. One had four small screws and the other had a piece of styrofoam???  No scale stack to be found.  I wonder if the stack was supposed to be in with the styrofoam.

Tom

No scale stack tooling exists yet fellas, so impossible anyone finds a scale stack!

the manual was created 4 months prior to production!

Thanks,

Mike

Mike,

When I thought my scale stack was missing I called Nicholas Smith Trains to check another one to verify if it should have one and he opened a Conrail one and said there was one in the bag with the 4 screws.  I'll have to call them back and ask them what they thought they saw.  

Does the Volume 2 Catalog say next years N5b's will NOT have smoke?

Footnote about only cabooses on a certain page have smoke yet saw no reduction in price. "Smoke included in N5b cabooses on page 69" Yet all the new cabooses are on page 68 at the same price! If so

  If I dusted mine off you'd never tell the 2 apart.

Beautiful work, Norm!

Bruce

I can...the numbers are different!

I have a green Lionel NYC bay window caboose from a couple of years back (sweet piece), and it did, indeed, come with a scale smoke jack (stack) - I know because I installed it, not caring for smoking caboosei (and ship's-funnel-sized exhausts).

I don't have the car in front of me, and the stack probably wouldn't just drop into place on the PRR car, but maybe Lionel Parts Dept.?

 looked at the new catalog and the various OGR threads on Lionel cabooses . Here is my take

Greetings All,

Well, my cabin car arrived on Friday and it had the black single coil trucks, (unlike the Tuscan painted leaf spring trucks shown in the catalog picture).  Additionally, the trucks are "rigid" instead of  sprung and equalized.  Further, the "Tilting Smoke Stack Cap" has a broken hinge pin, (which allows the deflector to pivot for whatever reason) and will not stay in place.  I'll have to call Trainworld and find out what, if anything, can be done.  For the price, I'm really not all that impressed.  Oh yes,  I received the four tiny screws in one small plastic bag and a piece of Styrofoam in another small plastic bag but no scale Smoke Stack either.

Chief Bob (Retired)

Hi Sean,

Yep, my Smoke Stack Deflector had a broken pin as well.  It appears that the pin broke off inside the hole in the stack itself.  Where did you purchase your cabin car?  I got mine from Trainworld.  I'll be giving them a call on Monday.

Chief Bob (Retired) 

Gents:

My N5B (out of the M1a set) HAS the scale smoke stack in the bag of screws.

I didn't notice the caboose manual stating any specific procedure to swap the stacks out.

Does anyone have detailed instructions?

I got the notice from Ro Saturday that my N5b is on the way. I would hope Lionel would make good on the scale smoke stack.

It looks as if it has been a bad month for new caboose models from both Lionel and MTH. Look at the post about the MTH CA 1 caboose modes.

We have waited over a year for these models and I am amazed with the issues we are having. Have I learned my lesson? No -  I ordered one of the N5b 's with the black roof and antenna. I have read here that the yellow roofs appeared in the 60's. My layout is stuck in the 50's for the most part.

Richard

The single spring trucks on the Lionel model are correct.  Although the spring looks a little smaller in diameter than prototype and the MTH trucks.

Since attached prototype photo of N5 # 477301 for comparison of trucks.

This thread further points out the frustrating challenges with overseas manufacturing today.  These cabooses have reportedly been the cause of the M1a Pennsy set NOT shipping until this past week (i.e., locos and hoppers were available months ago), and now all this misinformation about scale smokestacks... referenced in the manual but not shipped with the product; then being told the tooling doesn't yet exist; and now a report of them being included in the cabooses shipping with the M1a set.   

Gotta be frustrating for Lionel's Stateside personnel too.  They're trying to be authoritative at times when providing information to consumers, but communication with overseas factories remains in question.  So unless somebody is actually physically present at the factory to see this stuff with their own eyes, nobody's gonna believe anything until products are shipped to North Carolina for visual inspection/confirmation.  

David

This is confusing.  Because when I called Nicholas Smith and they checked a Conrail one they happen to have open, they said it DID have one.  Yet my Pennsy one did not.  And then Lionel saying they don't exist, which they obviously do. 

Its Anarchy!   HAHA

Just got an e-mail from Lionel.  This is what they said.

"We did get confirmation that there was a change in production and does not
include a scale smoke stack if it has a working smoke unit."

Do the people that are saying they got a scale smoke stack have smoke units in them?

I thought all of them in this run did have smoke units.

Can someone post a pic of the scale smokestack and the regular one?

Yep me too. saw the screws... didn't know I got the screw and bought and paid for it...

Will have call Lionel and see if they can send one out.

My Cabeese should be here today, I have a williams brass N5b lets see what the new one looks like side by side.

I should have done this in the first place:

 Unopened bag from my N5B: 4 screws, two brake hoses, 1 stack. If that is not a stack, what is it?

P.S. SANDJAM- without your input, I may have not ordered this set. Very happy with it! Thanks.