My childhood 2055 small Hudson. Got it, and my set, and my layout (never had a train around the Xmas tree) new in 1955. I well-used it but never abused it. Note the rollers and the homemade rear truck retaining c-clip, a brass washer that my father massaged in the 50's to replace the factory piece that got lost. Still there.
And, Lo: the class lights survived numerous too-fast 0-27 derailments - though the jewels are not original. Maybe the dust is, though...
The 2055 and clones were classy and had the best tooling of all the PW Lionel steamers; crisp and clean, and the shell was thinner and in one piece from pilot to cab, very different from and seemingly more sophisticated than most of the Lionel steamers of the time. I wonder if it had a different source? My favorite PW non-scale steamer (kinda had to be). It is even not a bad compressed near-model of the ATSF 3460-class 4-6-4's, except for the NYC scale Hudson-derived smokebox front .
