leapinlarry posted:David, your summary of Lionel Re-Manufacturing the Die-Cast ES44AC's is right on Target. Although they were Priced around $799-$850, at that time many Collector/Operators felt they were Over Priced for mere Diesels....Wow, no one would ever Imagine they would become such a Hot Commidity...Selling for almost double or even more due to limited Availability...I had each of them at one time and do to Down Sizing sold most of them, at a reasonable margin over what I paid as they were Built To Order priced to me... Knowing that Mike Reagan felt they were a Service Nightmare, and suggested negativity to their return to the Catalog, I think Now that Lionel is Listening to Our Wants, The Lionel Team might Return these Die-Cast Diesels again as a VisionLine Product, with newer and better Electronics, Blue Tooth/Wifi Capability, better trucks, and of course, More Money$$$$. They have the Tooling....I am thinking $1099.... I would also be a buyer as they were fun to run...I would also like to see the VisionLine Gensets come back, also Die-Cast NW2's, Maybe a Die-Cast SD70Ace????(The Tank Cars to) Wow, we can Dream.....
IIRC, the plastic ES44's had the headlights in the wrong location for many of the engines such as the Santa Fe and Florida East Coast road names where they should have been on the nose rather than over the windshield unlike the die-cast versions which seemed to be produced correctly. Wonder how much tooling they own? Probably the engines that have been re-run 3 or four times in the past few years? We're out on a $1,000 dollar diesel though in the current economy there seems to be a quite few folks with unlimited budgets.
