But what a funny picture!
http://www.ebay.com/itm/LIONEL...;hash=item519e9542c4
Jon 
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Isn't adding the 746 misleading? It seems a bit obvious that the seller hopes someone will see the pic and jump in with a bid before they read it's for the cheap tender only.
The auction was ended. Perhaps it was meant to be an April fools joke, and the seller planned to cancel the auction all along.
The tender came from one of the cheapest Lionel sets of the 1990s. MSRP on the set, $99.95. If I recall correctly, the engine only runs in forward.
When my son was around four or five years old he made me buy the "Safari" set. That engine only went forward also. I remember he played with it a couple of times and would pick the engine up and turn it around to get it to go the other way.
If I remember right it had a nice cardboard scene that came with it, along with a mat and some animals in a gondola. It was a real eye catching set but that one way engine was a real loser.
I guess that was around the late ninties when that came out. So what "ed" says above sounds about right for the time frame.
Mike played with it only a couple of times then it went into the box and under the platform. I guess you would say it's in like new condition so I will keep it the family for another hundred years and we will clean up on this fine collectable.
He does say in the ad that it's a tender for a switcher engine. Why the seller decided to show it hooked up to a J for the picture is anyone's guess. You're right, though - it's pretty funny. A J would get about 20 miles with the load in that tender!
