Did Lionel produce two variations of the Vision Line Amtrak GG1?

David:

That was mine.  It has red roof panels.

Ben 

I suspect the red roofs were supposed to be on the CONRAIL version...no other reason for them to exist!

David,  Your not crazy.  I was wondering the same thing myself.  Interesting to see the image of the one with the red roof panels posted here above.

Ben and Charlie,  thanks for your responses!!!   I was beginning to think I was losing it.

Very interesting though!  I wonder how many were produced either way?  Or if the center roof panel is removable, can folks order a replacement panel with their preferred color?

Lionel reps, care to comment? 

David

I will email Ryan and ask whether they have any silver roof panels lying around.  I don't really care, though agree the silver would look better.

Ben 

And yes the roof panels are easily removable.  They pop right off to allow access to the controls.

Ben 

David,

Not crazy at all, I was confounded as well when I saw another video on YouTube of the Amtrak GG1 with silver rooftop panels!

Michael

I also wondered what was going on. I saw the glimpse of the silver roof in Eric's video. Think Eric has "parting" lines?

I saw another VisionLine Amtrak GG1 up close and personal today.  It had the all-silver roof panels, and yes... it also had the center mold lines that Eliot pointed out in his now-deleted thread.  Didn't have the rectangular mold lines though... just the center lines between the roof-top panels and the pantographs.  Honestly, it's not something I would have noticed as a flaw, unless I purchased multiple units and had a point of comparison to one without the lines.

For curiosity sake, I wonder how many folks received their Amtrak version with the red roof-top panels?

Ben, any response from Lionel on this?

David

I must say that Lionel really went to some lengths to put as many detail variations into the GG1s as they could.  I just noticed the, forgive me, ugly ventilation screens on the Amtrak version.  

Our GG1 has all SILVER panels on the roof.  We restored to it's original AMTRAK paint scheme that way.

Hi all.  Sent an email to Ryan. A couple days later I had silver roof tops in the mail.  I think it was just a random mistake, but it is the simplest fix in the world and they got the replacements to me immediately.

Thanks,

Ben 

Glad it worked out for ya, Ben.  Kudos to Lionel for sending out the correct roof panels so quickly!

Oh, the horror - the rapid discovery and then death of a Valuable Variation Collectible! 

D500 posted:

Oh, the horror - the rapid discovery and then death of a Valuable Variation Collectible! 

Actually, nobody cares about that stuff these days anyway.  When I first saw it though, it reminded me of the days when the Greenberg Price Guides made a big stink about boxcars made with different color doors.  Or Fairbanks Morse locomotives made with different color roofs.  Back in the day, collectors went wild over this stuff.  But buyers have evolved (thankfully) beyond that today, once it became clear that those "variations" were nothing more than moment-in-time observations that gave sellers yet another reason to put a premium pricetag on something.  Nowadays, nobody cares.

Of course, having said that... I'm sure somebody out there is thinking, "Well if you think nobody cares, then why did you start this thread?"    And the answer simply is we live in a world today where information seems to evolve by the minute.  The first photo I (and many others here) saw of the Amtrak GG-1 had the red roof panels.  And the fact that the thread where those photos first were posted eventually got deleted only made things a bit more frustrating.  Then I saw a few videos/pics of Amtrak units with the all-silver roof tops, which to me looked better.  So it became more a question of curiosity than anything else.  And from what I'm concluding right now, it appears the "correct" model has all-silver rooftop panels.  Exactly how many models came with the red rooftop panels will likely remain a mystery.  But the fact that it's easily corrected with Lionel parts, makes this less of a production variation since folks can easily change their model to suit their color preference.  Had the rooftop panels not been removable, then this would have been a more legitimate production variation.

David

Rocky Mountaineer posted:

.....................  Exactly how many models came with the red rooftop panels will likely remain a mystery.  But the fact that it's easily corrected with Lionel parts, makes this less of a production variation since folks can easily change their model to suit their color preference.  Had the rooftop panels not been removable, then this would have been a more legitimate production variation.

David

Everything above may depend a bit on Lionel's method of achieving parts for these.

In the past, it has been pretty openly admitted that the Chinese manufacturing plants have no interest in producing and selling extra parts with the main orders, so Lionel had been dealing with that by buying extra whole units and disassembling them here to achieve a limited parts supply.

I agree no one will care if it's easily replaceable and remains that way for as many as were produced to begin with with the red panels.

We have a very limited sample here of people who purchased this model to determine if more came with red or silver.

If it were to turn out that almost all of them came with red, and there was a limited supply of silver to replace them, a silver paneled Amtrak could become the "hard to get" item just because of potential limited availability of panels.

Perhaps for this special case, Lionel may have leverage over the manufacturer to request a run of replacement panels as parts since a batch of the engines were not produced to whatever color the drawing stated they should be painted.

-Dave

I still have the red panels just in case it becomes worth a million dollars  

Now that it has been documented here on OGR, there's no question about the authenticity of the factory error.  Far more accurate than some hearsay from the aged memory of the "honest" seller.  Its pedigree could very well qualify it as a variation in collectors terms.  A variation with absolute proof.

That said, I'm REALLY happy my green GG1 didn't come with your roof panels.

Bruce