Original Post
When a fresh Lionel Catalog is released, I first look for ROCK ISLAND items because it's my favorite railroad. It served my hometown (Peoria, IL) with the PEORIA ROCKET when I was a boy. I was a passenger on that train to/from Chicago when I was a teenager attending a boarding academy in the mid-1950s at a Chicago suburb.
When I re-entered the O-gauge train hobby at age 50, I decided to focus on trains of the RI. Over several years, I collected all the RI trains made by Lionel and then expanded the scope of my collection with MTH, Weaver, Williams, Marx, and Atlas trains with RI décor. After a TIA and a cardiac incident, I decided to sell my RI-oriented collection via Stout Auctions. I kept a few RI trains as mementos but added some "must have" RI trains later on - new products not duplicates of my former collection.
So the two Rock Island locos in the Lionel 2023 Vol II catalog captured my attention - especially because that offer was for two AA locos with DIFFERENT RI paint schemes and two accompanying but separate-sale matching B units. The RI décor versions offered aren't the iconic "Full Rocket" scheme, which IMHO is one the best diesel loco liveries of all time. They are the simplified repaint versions applied by RI as cost-cutting measures.
In my recollection, this RI offer by Lionel is the first of its kind; i.e., an AA pair of the same RR but with different (both accurate) paint jobs and a BB pairing to match. Perhaps the Lionel marketing guys hoped RI loyalists would buy all four locos so they'd own two sets: an AB pair of both versions.
I'm now 83, so my time for collecting more RI trains (or rolling stock) is over. I passed on this Lionel RI offer. However, I hope other RI-leaning younger hobbyists will buy them to keep the memory of a "Mighty Fine Line" alive on their layouts.
Mike Mottler LCCA 12394
