Hello My Friends, My favorite Lionel 027 locomotive is Lionel Alco AA #2023 Union Pacific set yellow with green top made 1950-1951 made in USA or New York. They sure run pretty nice too . I have the full set of them.
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If we're talking Postwar, my initial impression was to agree with Longbow on the Alco sets. I have all of them and love them. But the one I chose is not supposed to be an 027 engine. It's my 2360 GG1.....the O gauge beast. I had issues with the front and rear trucks derailing on switches and solved the problem by adding a strong spring and washer to the "hook" on each truck. Not only did that solve the hopping/derailing issue, much to my surprise, this engine can now blow through back to back 027 switches. So, at least in my case, the 2360 is an 027 engine.
Roger
Green top?
I am aware of the 2023 Union Pacific ALCO in 3 color schemes:
Yellow with grey roof and top of nose
Yellow with grey roof only, top of nose is yellow
Silver with grey roof only
I guess I'd have to agree that the four ALCOs that were made the same way were the best 027 engines they made, along with the switchers that had very similar construction.
If I had to pick one, I think it would be the 2031 Rock Island ALCOs.
My 2026 I got for Christmas in 1948. Don
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221 or the O-27 version of the 675.
hello guys and gals...........
It have to be the Lionel 2029 and 634, they had a hard life under my ownership in 1968 until 8th grade (1973) !!
Tiffany
1666, hand me down from my cousins that I got for Christmas. Still have it, still runs. Now have several other pre and post war 1666s.
Hello My friends, Sorry about my color blindness I should have said grey not green roof on #2023 AA set. Thanks to all of you all the trains are all good for Lionel for 027 track. When are color blind like me it is a black and white world. I love all Lionel, Marx, American Flyer trains. Thanks longbow57ca.
I've got an Amrak Alco set from the LTI era, added LEDs, fixed the pilot and I'm going to run the wheels off it.
Scotie
Another thing you might want to try with those Alcos (I done this with 3 of my sets). I added a motor and power truck to the dummy and tethered it to the e-unit in the front engine. They are pulling animals now.
Roger
The Erie 2032 AA Alcos have always been a favorite. Would love to find a nice set. 
My first of course. 1949 2025 with green/gray passenger cars.
BUT I'd also have to add my 1951 NYC F3s.
I will have to say the 2023 Union Pacific ALCO silver and grey . Mine was a hand me down from my brother but I was the only one besides my dad who ever played with it. The set turns 65 years old this month and is still running strong on my layout when I take it out of the display case to run.
Any of the Lionel 44 ton switchers. Or my Nickle Plate Specail set from the early 90's. I got that for Christmas and that is what got me into O Gauge.
6220 for a switcher, 2025 steam or the 2245 F-3s for a diesel
johnstrains posted:The Erie 2032 AA Alcos have always been a favorite. Would love to find a nice set.
I would have to agree. They are understated classics. Nothing flashy, just pure class.
I always like this shot of two classy Lionel Alco's.
"not my photo or layout"
franktrain
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I would say the 2025 with 6400 green tin passenger cars that I got for Christmas 1948 and still running.
Mikey
Jim 1939 posted:My first of course. 1949 2025 with green/gray passenger cars.
BUT I'd also have to add my 1951 NYC F3s.
I have this set was my 1st,,,,had the engine restored,cars like maybe verygood,,,but it is still a great set,,,my 2nd set was the 2032 erie alco,and then the santa fe with passenger cars,,,,,still would be the 2025 set rated #1
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My 2026 I got for Christmas in 1948. Don
Don, I got the 2-6-4 version in a 1949 set for Christmas. I was 2 years old. I still have it and it runs fine.
Bob
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That is my favorite 027 loco. We wound up with one when I was around 10 years old, 1963ish. I remember our neighbor upstairs gave us a box of trains that had been her son's and it was in that box. I didn't appreciate it then, as much as I do now.
A 2-6-4 2026 made in 1949 would be a very rare engine. The 2-6-4 2026 is a 2036(introduced in 1950) with MagneTraction deleted due to materials restrictions dictated by the Korean war manufacturing efforts.
Dunno if the recent starter set 0-8-0's qualify as "0-27", but l have one kit bashed into a GW 2-8-0, and another to convert to a Mikado. (This last for my fictitious home road, which means it will get a smokebox Elesco, Vanderbilt tender, and flying pumps, like the unavailable C&O Mikes)
I love my 2046......a great combination of pulling power and sleekness....
Peter
My rebirth to the hobby was via a Lionel 4-4-2 starter set bought at K-Mart (still have that engine and it still runs after all these years). But it was K-Line that really got me going. Next purchases were several K-Line S-2 Cross Country sets. Despite all the changes in the hobby with features and electronics, the K-Line S-2 has been and still is my favorite engine. Perfect size for an 027 layout.
Of course, I repaint them (CSX, Norfolk Southern, Conrail, etc.) , add lights and other details to them. The K-Line Alco FA is another favorite. Using the Lionel 1033, with the B-U voltage setting, I've never had the trouble of overly fast running or jack-rabbit starts. Same for Williams.
RMT did a fabulous job with the reissue of the K-Line S-2. Not only the visual improvements, but the change in the motor specs means the RMT S-4 runs slowly at start ups even using a typical postwar transformer. Same goes for their reissue of the K-Line RMT Budd Car.
The Lionel Industrial Switcher is another modern era favorite of mine and I have a bunch in a custom repainted rainbow of road names, also adding lights, handrails, etc. As an accident, I shorted a circuit board reverse unit in one... decided to add weight to it in place of the circuit board and run it on DC current. I pull 10-12 cars with no trouble with mine (they can pull even more). Same goes for the variety of DC-only MPC era steam engines. Since not many like those engines, I get them real cheap. Making the visual and internal improvements makes them run and pull like they never could out of the box.
As a side note here, when I first started doing trains shows, it was the HO guys who were full of praise and compliments for my trains. "I thought you guys were prototype oriented? My trains are toys." They'd tell me, "yes, but you're modeling! Something we do too. We never see Lionel guys doing the amount of repainting and kitbashing you do." I heard that from a good many HO modelers, which really took me by surprise.
The K-Line MP-15 has become a favorite for kitbashing. I chop down Lionel GP or U-Boat shells to fit the length of the MP-15, also shortening the height a little bit. Very pleased with these. It's almost as if MARX is still in business on my layout, making replications of locomotives that look good on 027 curves and not out place pulling smaller 027 rolling stock.
As far as postwar goes, any of the Prairie type or any of the other specific 027 steamers are tops. The Lionel engineers were brilliant in their use of selective compression (that goes for the Alco FA too). You get a beefy steam engine, that resembles the real thing close enough for me, yet runs comfortably on 027 curves and doesn't look out of place pulling 027 cars either.
There are lots of engines that will snake through 027 curves and switches, BUT do they look good doing it? Do they blend in or stand out from other 027 types of rolling stock? That's my criteria.
So another favorite of mine is the MTH Railking (Rugged Rails) F-3. Some complain, it's too short. YES, that's the point! That's what makes it good!!! Some of the other early Railking locos that did negotiate 027 curves and switches, were still too big in my eyes for an 027 layout... and they towered above the rolling stock. Had MTH not made the side decks and handrails part of the shell assembly, I would have chopped the height down on those engines too.
My sentimental favorite is my 2018 I bought in 1955 to replace my burned out Scout. My nephews got my 2018 and ran the wheels off it. I got it back dead, had it rebuilt, and runs nice now.
Yes! That 2018, though underrated by "collectors" is still a great steam engine and I'm currently working on one right now. Pristine postwar pieces are one thing... I leave them as is. Visually beat up is another and those are candidates for the Brianel paint shop.
Not Lionel but Marx steam 999 loco's they run forever and ever.
My kids called it the ghost train because the light shining through the 999 number board would cast the numbers on the wall and look like three ghosts.
franktrain
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Right now, my favorite is this little Rock Island Alco I found at York. It's from a 1975 uncatalogued Sears set.
It's just a no-frills, no front coupler, 2-position e-unit Alco, but it does have a reasonably accurate '70s paint scheme:
MPC is full of pleasant surprises like that 
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I also like this locomotive, as it is good looking and blows perfect smoke rings. Mine, however, was bought at an antique show in the 1990's, without its tender. It was my first PW steamer.
As a kid I always wanted the high end models. As I get older I appreciate the hard working O27 engines more. I had Len Caparelli repaint several 622's as later engines. My favorites are the 621 and especially the 600 which turned out great.
a 2018 that I got at Christmas , still runs fine
Nice looking Marx 999's posted....very early ones with perforated pikots. More common 999 junk box motors can power other projects, as one l an now working on.
My sentimental favorites are my Dad's 1655 2-4-2 made in 1948 and My Grandad's 249 2-4-2 made in 1958. I still have both sets and they run great.
The smoothest running 027s in my opinion were all of the early Alco FA AA Units as well as the early NW-2 Switchers. Great running engines.
For looks I always liked the so-called "Baby Hudsons", 2046, 2055 and 2065.
Lionel 1957, 44 Ton Switcher, LV Black on Red. It is a very cool rendition of a toy train. Just what Lionel meant it to be. 
I know there are a lot of rolling eye balls out there right now, but that's the kind of guy I am! 
GG1MAN: well said!! The 625 was my Dads first train. Without it, we may not be involved in the hobby. 
BOIN106 -
Yes - the 2055 Santa Fe-type Hudson. I also got my set (and layout) in 1955 - I was 7. It was a real layout - spurs, a siding, some scratch built (by my father) buildings, a control panel...I was a lucky boy. Not rich, but my father could do anything, like so many men back then.
I do Hi-rail scale-y stuff now - big steamers and such - but watching that 2055 round the corner in a darkened room, past my sidings and buildings, looking so absolutely real to my pre-teen eyes, will never be equaled in this hobby, even though I (and most of you) have spent thousands of dollars trying to recapture it.
Yes, I still have it - and everything on that layout - but not the table itself.
The 2055 was not blue, nor did it have eyeballs, nor any face other than that of a steam locomotive. Who would have wanted that?
gg1man posted:Lionel 1957, 44 Ton Switcher, LV Black on Red. It is a very cool rendition of a toy train. Just what Lionel meant it to be.
I know there are a lot of rolling eye balls out there right now, but that's the kind of guy I am!
I was always in the eye-rolling camp, what with it being so oversized for a 44 tonner, and in a weird paint scheme, too. But then I received a 625, and the set that went with it, from a colleague who wanted his childhood train to go to a good home. It has made me change my mind. The engine is a smooth runner and a good puller. And put that paint scheme together with its set - white gon with red canisters, red LV hopper, black flatcar with autos, red flatcar with logs, and a tuscan caboose - and it looks great. Consider me converted!
The first I owned: the #2025/675 K-4. Still running as a Passenger engine with 027 streamliners.
