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A.J. - I know your Post asked if Lionel had ever done a 'scale' T1 Duplex, but because your OP also expressed an interest in a 'Legacy' version I thought I'd bring the following to your attention - although I realize it relates to LionMaster versions.

The first LM version (6-38020) of the Duplex was #5514 released in 2003, and a 2nd 'upgraded' LM version (6-11207) was #5511 released in 2010; but here's the point. Among other things the list of features the #5511 has include "LEGACY Command Control, LEGACY RailSounds, and Odyssey II Speed Control" as well as "Vision Whistle Steam".

Don't know if that helps or not but you may want to check out all of the features on Lionel's website.    

I also think this would make an excellent candidate for the Legacy lineup, perhaps even the Vision Line, in which case it'd quite possibly be my first VL purchase.

To me, the Pennsy T1 Duplex was Raymond Loewy's crowning achievement. I know many think the GG1 was, but to me, the T1 stands out from all other streamliners, steam, electric, and diesel-electric.

A.J.

    I have been waiting for a Legacy Scale T1 for the last 8 years. Either a Legacy or a Vision Line version would sell like crazy. Don’t understand why Lionel has been holding out an updated scale version especially when they have repeated the Reading T1s after 5 years, the UP FEF engines have been produced twice in Leagcy and god do we need another Hudson?

    If a VISION LINE T1 is offered it should have the Big Boy wheel slip sound effect, smoke from the stack, whistle and cylinders (like the GS4s). Lionel is running out of time for me to make a high dollar purchase so they need to get going on a scale Legacy version soon.

JohnB

Last edited by JohnB
RoyBoy posted:

MTH made their Premier version with full skirts. The Lionel version has the skirting removed, as the locos appeared later in their short careers.

MTH's T1 is the 1942 as-built version of the two prototype engines.  They had their skirts for only a year before they were removed sometime in 1943.

The Lionel version is one the 50 production engines, built in 1945-6.  None of these had skirts.  Some of these 50 were as built the way Lionel's looks, some had porthole pilots.  Most were like Lionel's (no portholes) by 1950.

Don't forget what Thomas said about the lawsuit Lionel lost concerning the original tooling.  That may also be why they haven't done new tooling for this engine.

Last edited by CAPPilot
PH1975 posted:

JohnB - If what Mikado4501 says (above) is correct, unfortunately you may have a very long wait.

PH,

    At the York show a few years ago I asked Ryan Kunkle about when we were going to see a Legacy scale Pennsy T1 and he said one was in the works and I should keep a eye on the next few catalogs. My guess is about 6 or 8 catalogs have come out since. He never said there were any issues with the tooling. Maybe he was thinking about the Reading T1.

JohnB

Last edited by JohnB
CAPPilot posted:

Here is a very poor video of my Lionel T-1.  It is 4-chuffs/rev because it was upgraded with TAS cruise which had a selectable choice of 2- or 4-chuffs.  Really wish ERR had that capability.  I also had the 4 center drivers beveled to eliminate the shorting issue.

Ron,

I have this engine & it shorts trying to go thru the turnout on ATLAS O 072 switches It works fine with ATLAS O #5 switches.   Was that your problem??    Would you explain the beveling of the 4 drivers process more please?? Would you recommend someone whom could do the beveling process??   I love this engine, but can only run it on one of my 3 main lines, due to two mains have 072 switches that the engine shorts on.  Would love to solve this problem.     Thank you in advance for any help.

 

Craig,

If you look at the four center drivers, the ones without flanges, you can see how wide they are.  They would short on some of my switches but that was long ago and I forgot which ones.

The inside of the drivers need to be ground down just a bit, or beveled to allow more clearance.  I had someone do it and they took the engine apart so the metal shavings would not get into the electronics.  Big Mistake.  Took him a long time to get it back together, especially aligning the drivers correctly.

If you can grind the drivers down while still on the engine that would be better, just don't know if that is possible.  Anyway, I'm sure making the drivers a bit thinner at the outer edge will solve your problem.

I don't understand what the lawsuit was about.  I get Lionel having certain rights to the Polar Express and the Disney Stuff, but MTH, Lionel, and other companies still make the same engines.  It seems like most relatively known and moderately popular engines are made by both MTH and Lionel (how many comparison videos have we seen over the years right?).  If this is the case, I didn't realize that Lionel and MTH had exclusive rights to certain engines...

Does anyone have anymore information on this?  Obviously if Lionel was ordered by the courts not to produce a Pennsy T1 that would definitely effect any chance of them coming out with a new one.  

CAPPilot posted:

Here is a very poor video of my Lionel T-1.  It is 4-chuffs/rev because it was upgraded with TAS cruise which had a selectable choice of 2- or 4-chuffs.  Really wish ERR had that capability.  I also had the 4 center drivers beveled to eliminate the shorting issue.

 

ERR can have that capability, no problem at all.

Chuff-Generator

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KOOLjock1 posted:

Somebody missed the 90's!  The lawsuit wasn't about exclusive rights.  It was about one Korean engineer walking out of his firm with a disc containing the actual designs for one company, walking across town to another company, and using them, to make trains for the competition.

Jon

Well I didn't miss the 90s but I was a teenager during them lol So the big question I have is this: Does this incident your talking about prevent Lionel from ever doing a true up to date Scale Legacy Pennsy T1?  Because if that's so obviously that narrows down my options to pretty much MTH as 3rd Rail's engine is probably impossible to get now.  Thanks.  

A.J. posted:

I don't understand what the lawsuit was about.  I get Lionel having certain rights to the Polar Express and the Disney Stuff, but MTH, Lionel, and other companies still make the same engines.  It seems like most relatively known and moderately popular engines are made by both MTH and Lionel (how many comparison videos have we seen over the years right?).  If this is the case, I didn't realize that Lionel and MTH had exclusive rights to certain engines...

Does anyone have anymore information on this?  Obviously if Lionel was ordered by the courts not to produce a Pennsy T1 that would definitely effect any chance of them coming out with a new one.  

Manufacturers don't have exclusive rights to an engine type.  Had the Lionel T1 been a perfect scale model it might have been hard to prove any designs were wrongfully obtained. However, die-cast tooling requires compromises to allow the engine casting to release from the mold.  In this case, the Lionel compromises were exactly the same as the compromises of the MTH design.  Not saying this on its own was enough to prove the case but it would certainly have been enough to raise suspicion.  At any rate, the ruling was the tooling was ill gotten and can't be used.  Don't know what options Lionel has for creating new tooling, perhaps one of the die-cast and brass hybrids.

A.J. posted:
KOOLjock1 posted:

Somebody missed the 90's!  The lawsuit wasn't about exclusive rights.  It was about one Korean engineer walking out of his firm with a disc containing the actual designs for one company, walking across town to another company, and using them, to make trains for the competition.

Jon

Well I didn't miss the 90s but I was a teenager during them lol So the big question I have is this: Does this incident your talking about prevent Lionel from ever doing a true up to date Scale Legacy Pennsy T1?  Because if that's so obviously that narrows down my options to pretty much MTH as 3rd Rail's engine is probably impossible to get now.  Thanks.  

There's a 3rd Rail on eBay right now.

The TMCC Lionel version was true scale dimensions, only issue was the tender cutout people have mentioned.

Outside the latest MTH versions, if you want the newest electronics, you're going to be doing upgrades no matter what

 

Interestingly enough, there are two of them on eBay right now, one Lionmaster, one not. 

From what I can see, the Lionmaster one has an articulated chassis, like a Kitson Meyer and is listed as “minimum curve 031”; the other one (which I take to be the “scale” version under discussion) appears to have a rigid chassis. The box can’t be read, but I assume the minimum curve is considerably more than that! 

 

Last edited by Rockershovel
Rockershovel posted:

Interestingly enough, there are two of them on eBay right now, one Lionmaster, one not. 

From what I can see, the Lionmaster one has an articulated chassis, like a Kitson Meyer and is listed as “minimum curve 031”; the other one (which I take to be the “scale” version under discussion) appears to have a rigid chassis. The box can’t be read, but I assume the minimum curve is considerably more than that! 

 

The Lionmaster articulated engines have separate power trucks that swivel like on a diesel IIRC.

CAPPilot posted:

Craig,

If you look at the four center drivers, the ones without flanges, you can see how wide they are.  They would short on some of my switches but that was long ago and I forgot which ones.

The inside of the drivers need to be ground down just a bit, or beveled to allow more clearance.  I had someone do it and they took the engine apart so the metal shavings would not get into the electronics.  Big Mistake.  Took him a long time to get it back together, especially aligning the drivers correctly.

If you can grind the drivers down while still on the engine that would be better, just don't know if that is possible.  Anyway, I'm sure making the drivers a bit thinner at the outer edge will solve your problem.

Ron,

Thank you much for your reply. I understand now.  I have tried tape on top of rails in places I suspect of wheels touching rails causing shorts with limited success.  Obviously beveling the wheels is beyond my capabilities.

ANYONE on the forum know of someone whom could bevel the wheels????     Thank you for any help.

CAPPilot posted:
gunrunnerjohn posted:

ERR can have that capability, no problem at all.

Chuff-Generator

John,

You repaired the TAS board once.  If it fails again I'm going with the chuff generator as well as your other great products to give it the wow factor.  Not sure I would put Legacy in it because I think you would loose that great sound board. 

Ron,

Lionel actually made a T1 Legacy Sound Board that they used in their Legacy LionMaster version (6-11207) which you can purchase and put in the Legacy Scale version.  That is what I did with my TMCC one I upgraded to ERR Cruise M board so I would have the correct (and updated) sound board as it was for Engine 5511 which is the same number as the original Scale Version.

You know Ron, that is not a bad video. It is pretty clear where it needs to be.

Also, talking about Lionel doing another run of these, that is probably something that we will see some day. I have had several conversations with Ryan about the 3 outcast locomotives without saying their names when I was fishing for at least some kind of answer from him. The first two times he really didn't answer so the third time(last year's October York), I had been somewhat more specific saying how certain engines you haven't made for certain reasons, that maybe someday you will do them again. His reply was that eventually these "certain engines" could be produced, just need new toolings, and all other stuff that would be required to go ahead. That is probably the clearest answer to my question. Now the one thing remains is when. Until the catalog with the engines in question come out, we'll be asking every way we can.

Ted R posted:
A.J. posted:

I don't understand what the lawsuit was about.  I get Lionel having certain rights to the Polar Express and the Disney Stuff, but MTH, Lionel, and other companies still make the same engines.  It seems like most relatively known and moderately popular engines are made by both MTH and Lionel (how many comparison videos have we seen over the years right?).  If this is the case, I didn't realize that Lionel and MTH had exclusive rights to certain engines...

Does anyone have anymore information on this?  Obviously if Lionel was ordered by the courts not to produce a Pennsy T1 that would definitely effect any chance of them coming out with a new one.  

Manufacturers don't have exclusive rights to an engine type.  Had the Lionel T1 been a perfect scale model it might have been hard to prove any designs were wrongfully obtained. However, die-cast tooling requires compromises to allow the engine casting to release from the mold.  In this case, the Lionel compromises were exactly the same as the compromises of the MTH design.  Not saying this on its own was enough to prove the case but it would certainly have been enough to raise suspicion.  At any rate, the ruling was the tooling was ill gotten and can't be used.  Don't know what options Lionel has for creating new tooling, perhaps one of the die-cast and brass hybrids.

There were two main issues.  1.  The Lionel unit was in the marketplace less than 6 weeks after the MTH unit came to market. Its hard to cut that much tooling without a head start.  2.  The parts were interchangable from Lionel to MTH.

Lou N

Lionel's "skirtless" version is better looking to me, less heavy-handed than the others with the shrouding effect with full skirting.

There's nothing stopping Lionel from producing a new T1; they just have to invest in the tooling. Given the repeats of existing die-cast molds that are getting old at this point, the firm IMO needs to build some new models, and the T1 is at the front of the list, at least for this Pennsy fan.

Paul Kallus posted:

Lionel's "skirtless" version is better looking to me, less heavy-handed than the others with the shrouding effect with full skirting.

There's nothing stopping Lionel from producing a new T1; they just have to invest in the tooling. Given the repeats of existing die-cast molds that are getting old at this point, the firm IMO needs to build some new models, and the T1 is at the front of the list, at least for this Pennsy fan.

Paul,

    Could not agree with you more. Hopefully Lionel will pull their heads out of their you know what and get going on a Pennsy scale Legacy T1. I say this with love and peace.

JohnB

Last edited by JohnB

I had the Lionel TMCC version.  It's a nice model and runs well.  I got rid of it as I prefer the prototype skirted version and I didn't want to invest in putting cruise, super chuffer, etc in a loco I wasn't the happiest with style wise.  It's a great loco though.  I never knew it was tied to the lawsuit, I thought that was all over the puffing smoke patent.

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