@Rusty Traque posted:Mike was making tinplate long before the Lionel Corporation Tinplate licensing. The tooling is MTH's.
Rusty
The licensing allowed MTH to mark the trains as Lionel, which probably increased their desirability for some buyers. Other than that, I don't think there were any differences in the designs. For example, the pre-licensing 400E loco has "MTH" on the cab, while the LCT version has the circle L logo.
Personally, I just want to run a retro-style tinplate train - doesn't matter what the lettering says.