Pocahontas Add On Cars - Anyone interested in a custom run?

In my opinion, not going to happen. I think that when the aluminum cars (not cancelled) are issued, that is the end of this "line". Think plastic in the future from Lionel and the 21" size for the time being.

I would buy 2 of them.

Michael,

There's certainly no harm in pursuing this with Lionel.  The worst they could say is "No". 

Since these are painted aluminum cars, I can't see why Lionel wouldn't want to do it if the interest is there.  If I understood Lionel's explanation as to why they're transitioning to platic-body passenger cars, they seem to have had trouble with the POLISHED aluminum finish.  So producing painted aluminum should be a much less challenging issue.  Did I misunderstand something?

Somewhat ironic that Scott Mann has no problem launching a second production run of high-level El Cap cars, and Lionel is telling us they can't get quality polished aluminum from their suppliers.    Sometimes, we just don't know what to believe, and we're at the mercy of information -- whether it's accurate or not.

Best of luck!!!

David

As I said above, in all probability the Lionel 18" aluminum passenger cars are done once the last of them are shipped this year. I am told that there were production issues that I am pretty sure they do not want to revisit. A special limited run for any road name is wishful thinking at this point.

As far as the GGD El Capitan set, they are indeed aluminum cars, but I believe they will have a painted finish, not polished aluminum.

It would be sad if they just abandoned this group. Piggy backing additional pre sold cars onto an existing production run is very cheap, especially as they already have the paint masks. The new Alton and Blue Comet sets were beautiful, yet without any real info on additional cars two friends cancelled their orders. Was tempted to get a set even up until last year but the silence from Lionel on add-on cars stopped that. Without additional cars this set may suffer the same fate.

We may never know the real reason Lionel went into plastic passenger cars from the outstanding aluminum ones, even if the engineering school they attended didn't know the meaning of flush windows, the gleaming Santa Fe cars look spectacular. The image someone posted on the forum of a Texas Special observation car from the rear shows what we missed out on having with aluminum.

Just a couple of thoughts.

Lionel does do custom runs, but they require varying quantities for a minimum order.  Typically a traditional size freight car is a 500 minimum run while standard O is 300.  I don't know on passenger cars, but you would looking in that range per car if they were open to rerunning the aluminum passenger cars.  If you wanted multiple car names or numbers then it is a new custom run.  As for tooling, Lionel may or may not have it depending on what factory they are using to run passenger cars.  They utilize multiple factories in Asia and now to a limited extent in the US.

The reason Lionel is going to plastic cars is fairly straight forward.  It's all about cost.  Atlas can do a plastic scale 21" passenger car and sell it at a street price of about $115 a car.  An equivalent aluminum car wouldn't pencil out at anything less than $250 per car.  To build the old K-Line cars in today's market would still be north of $200 per car.  Every manufacturer has seen price increases from their factories consistently every year. 

There is no reason not to ask however.  My dealings with Lionel have been very straight forward and friendly.