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Dear Fellow Trainees:

Many of you who are about my age (58) may recall this magazine of our youth.  Within its pages, one of the many well, highlights that I can recall, is something called "What's wrong with this picture?"

As many times as I look at the old Postwar catalogs, the more things I find, well, NOT EXACTLY.

http://www.tcaetrain.org/artic...OOK_PART4/index.html
1957_catalog
The back page of the 1957 Lionel catalog is a good example.  Why they did use their new Super-O track is beyond me.  Irregardless, which I know is not a word, you will find at least two glaring errors here.  First is the  placement of the #3927 Track Cleaning Car by the three bumpers in the bottom right of the drawing.  As we know, the coupler is only on one end, and it is facing the bumper.  How would this item ever be towed out of this spur?  Oops.

Then the most tsk tak moment:  the trestle near the ZW, is actually sitting right on the track!  Major OOPS.

I was looking at the 1959 and 1960 catalogs when I found something that was totally foreign to me.  A Super-Uh Oh moment.

Who can tell me which item was drawn totally wrong, not even close?


Bob Mintz

 

 Clue:  1959 was the first year that it was made.

 

1959_catalog

1960_catalog

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Nope...

 

I cannot tell you how many times that I have looked at these catalogs, and this is the very first time that I had noticed the error.

 

It is in the 1959 (top) catalog.

 

The clue is that this item was first made in 1959.

 

Although Super-O Track came out in 1957, this Super-O item was not manufactured until 1959.

 

Bob Mintz

To do away with the cumbersome 2-part #61/#62 track power connections, Lionel introduced the #43 Power Track / Terminal Track in 1959. 

 

The '59 illustration is WAY off, the '60 illustration is closer, but still not right.

 

This caused geometry issues in sets, which were now "fudged" a little by the flexibility of the track.

 

As long as they were tooling up a new track section for the 43, they should have just made a slight modification to the regular #31 & #32 tooling to allow runs of straight and curved "terminal tracks".

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