IS LIONEL OUT OF THE 18" PASSENGER CAR BUSINESS?

Sadly, no one went for this. Years ago, I (and several others) had suggested that Lionel and MTH go with a three-tiered offering of passenger cars -- 15" for entry level, 18" for O-42, and 21" for the 3RS crowd. Of course, with each level, the number of fantasy schemes would decrease.

Don’t feel too badly, pt. I can run only 15-inchers on my 036 curves only layout and Lionel stopped making them years ago. But I’ve found 2 really nice 15 inch passenger car sets on the secondary market, both MIB at very reasonable prices.

Great Question, it’s very doubtful there will ever be 18 inch aluminum passenger cars made via Lionel, however, I think they still make 18 inch Heavyweight cars, maybe not offered in this beautiful catalog. I think Sunset ThirdRail, 3Rd Rail, GGD?, might possibly begin making these 18 inch scale like aluminum passenger cars… We need to keep on encouraging Lionel to make the 18 inch Aluminum passenger cars… Happy Railroading Everyone

Lionel still makes 18” heavyweights and they are nice. However, I believe they ceded the 18” streamline market to MTH which are also very nice. Conflicting reports on the forum as to whether MTH still has the streamline tools or if they were sold to Atlas. I seem to recall a conversation that the ship has sailed on aluminum cars. It’s ABS from here on out irrespective of size.

I’m sorry. But to me, plastic passenger cars are just wrong.

Yes for now. Mth Now Atlas O will have a corner in this market segment.

Someone better tell MTH and Atlas!  They haven't announced any in a couple years.

@Yellowstone Special posted:

I’m sorry. But to me, plastic passenger cars are just wrong.

Your diesels are plastic, why not the passenger cars?

I believe the Reading cars from a couple of years back were 18", so they do have the ability to do so. You should understand why they don't though, competition.

I believe Scott Mann's (3rd Rail/GGD) 'feeler' announcement re 18" passenger cars has disappeared.

Since both 3rd Rail and GGD projects survive on a mix of O2R and O3R demand, I suspect the 18" genre, which is a fairly exclusive O3R market (as is the 15" genre, most certainly!), could not muster the numbers to be viable.  Just a guess, mind you.

Full scale, 21" length, O scale passenger cars have always been a conundrum to me.  I guess I spent too much time in The Dark Side (HO) and the dominance of/adherence to NMRA Standards/Recommended Practices.  For full length (80+') cars, the recommended practice was 32" minimum radius for HO, or, in O3R parlance, O-128.  However, NMRA's recommended practice for O-gaugers having such equipment is a minimum radius of 72"...or, in O3R parlance O-144...a 12-foot diameter!!

I know that lots of clever designs have been created in the O3R realm to enable these cars to traverse radii half...or less...the NMRA RP's.  "Streamline" seems to lose some of its meaning when I see a train of 21" passenger cars traversing O-72 curves.  (Talk about severe 'turbulence' impacting ridership in an airliner!!)  TEHO, of course.  And it's just this one guy's opinion.

It's all rhetorical, anyway.  If it sells, so what?  Besides, bigger is better...right?

Thanks...but I'll hang on to my fleet of 15" and 18" 'streamliners'.  We're in our happy place.

Atlas List them.     www.atlasrr.com

That is a shame. Even on my big layout, I prefer to run 18” passenger cars. When the 21” cars were first issued, I bought most of the sets. Quality issues, no passengers and a few other things just bothered me.

I sold them all.
I prefer the 18” cars, Lionel or MTH, plastic or aluminum, it does not matter. Just my opinion and what works for me.
Donald

Thanks too all for your comments.

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Lionel just release a set with 18" cars? Black River? And doesn't the Lehigh excursion set have 18" cars? Mabe that is "THE END OF THE LINE" for the 18".

Thanks again.

@Rider Sandman posted:

.....However, I believe they ceded the 18” streamline market to MTH which are also very nice. Conflicting reports on the forum as to whether MTH still has the streamline tools or if they were sold to Atlas.....

The MTH streamline cars are a 1/2" shorter than the Lionel cars, so some like the MTH cars better on tighter curves.

@ptbarnm69 posted:

Thanks too all for your comments.

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Lionel just release a set with 18" cars? Black River? And doesn't the Lehigh excursion set have 18" cars? Mabe that is "THE END OF THE LINE" for the 18".

Thanks again.

Lionel has 18" heavyweights lettered for C&O coming out alongside their Greenbriers. You can find them in the 2022 Vol 2 catalog. Highly doubt they are getting out of the heavyweight business.

I am going to put a positive spin on this.

I have been buying 18" K-Lines, they are my favorites (the trucks don't self-destruct after 10 years).  So maybe these will hold there value for when my daughter needs to sell them.

@MikeH posted:

Someone better tell MTH and Atlas!  They haven't announced any in a couple years.

Whst are you ralking about? Last May Atlas O released a bunch of heavyweight sets.

@MikeH posted:

Someone better tell MTH and Atlas!  They haven't announced any in a couple years.

@prrhorseshoecurve posted:

Whst are you ralking about? Last May Atlas O released a bunch of heavyweight sets.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Your diesels are plastic, why not the passenger cars?

I know and I can’t explain it. But, it still just doesn’t seem right. 🤔

@prrhorseshoecurve posted:

Whst are you ralking about? Last May Atlas O released a bunch of heavyweight sets.

Yes, Altas released a bunch of MTH heavyweights. Talk about teamwork lol!

I had asked Ryan at one of the York's I attended a few years ago about 21" & 18" passenger cars. Ryan's answer wasn't that they would never do 18" cars, more of an answer of "not at this time" reply. He did state(which I said above) about the Reading set of 18" cars. He had said about that one, something like he didn't think it would look right, or wanted to get as close as the prototype as possible, I think meaning that whatever they scale up to would mean that they would have to be 18" cars.

So I would imagine that this may play out a bit still where we will still have all these 21" passenger cars coming out, but I do believe that there will be a mix coming in depending on what they decide to produce as far as engines go. For now, we are stuck at Blackjack.

@dkdkrd posted:

I believe Scott Mann's (3rd Rail/GGD) 'feeler' announcement re 18" passenger cars has disappeared.

Since both 3rd Rail and GGD projects survive on a mix of O2R and O3R demand, I suspect the 18" genre, which is a fairly exclusive O3R market (as is the 15" genre, most certainly!), could not muster the numbers to be viable.  Just a guess, mind you.

Full scale, 21" length, O scale passenger cars have always been a conundrum to me.  I guess I spent too much time in The Dark Side (HO) and the dominance of/adherence to NMRA Standards/Recommended Practices.  For full length (80+') cars, the recommended practice was 32" minimum radius for HO, or, in O3R parlance, O-128.  However, NMRA's recommended practice for O-gaugers having such equipment is a minimum radius of 72"...or, in O3R parlance O-144...a 12-foot diameter!!

I know that lots of clever designs have been created in the O3R realm to enable these cars to traverse radii half...or less...the NMRA RP's.  "Streamline" seems to lose some of its meaning when I see a train of 21" passenger cars traversing O-72 curves.  (Talk about severe 'turbulence' impacting ridership in an airliner!!)  TEHO, of course.  And it's just this one guy's opinion.

It's all rhetorical, anyway.  If it sells, so what?  Besides, bigger is better...right?

Thanks...but I'll hang on to my fleet of 15" and 18" 'streamliners'.  We're in our happy place.

Wasn't there a post from Sunset/GGD that they had dropped the 18" project?

IIRC when they announced the price it was almost what their 21" cars cost and the enthusiasm (aka "Demand") vanished.

I missed something here (not unusual).  We were initially discussing Lionel's 21" streamlined passenger cars and the lack of 18" streamlined passenger cars, specifically aluminum ones.  How did we get off on heavyweights?  I would expect Lionel to release more of their 18" HW cars in the next catalog (hopefully).

AtlasO did catalog ex-MTH 18" HW cars, but I have not seen any ex-MTH 18" streamlined cars yet.  I think the 18" streamlined cars are what is missing.

I've been surprised that Lionel has not yet gotten around to doing new 15" streamlined passenger cars. Been waiting and waiting for those. When they come, they will be plastic (Lionel announced several years ago that for various reasons they won't be doing aluminum cars anymore), but given that the majority of operators don't have layouts of the size required to run 21" cars, it seems more than a little odd that Lionel has been so slow to get new 15" cars to market. There are a lot of engines being manufactured that don't have any streamlined passenger cars to pull.

When the time came for Lionel to transition to plastic streamlined passenger cars, I'd be interested to see the reasons they decided to do 21" cars first. I would have thought 15" cars would have been first, and then 18"" cars before the 21" versions. There had been a demand for the 21" cars from the full scale crowd with large layouts, of course, and input from them that the 18" cars were just too small. I understand that, but from a market standpoint it would seem the market for these large cars would be less than that for 18" cars, and certainly less than the market for 15" cars.

Of course, I don't have the marketing data Lionel has, but it would be interesting to see what factors drove their decision to produce the 21" cars first.

I think the 21" cars look pretty bad on the curves most layouts have.  My minimum curve is around an 080 with the rest 088 and wider.  For me I like how the 18" cars look on my layout.

@breezinup posted:

Of course, I don't have the marketing data Lionel has, but it would be interesting to see what factors drove their decision to produce the 21" cars first.

Go back and look at the MTH catalogs of the time period. Every edition had countless 18” passenger cars, but nothing larger. The 21” stuff was GGD or the like and very expensive. I believe Lionel saw a void in the 21” ABS cars and saturation in the 18” cars. I think 15” cars were squeezed out by an evolving market - too small for the scale guys and too large and/or expensive for traditional guys, especially with both Lionel and MTH making really nice 12” cars for their traditional sets.

@dkdkrd posted:

However, NMRA's recommended practice for O-gaugers having such equipment is a minimum radius of 72"...or, in O3R parlance O-144...a 12-foot diameter!!

I'm not sure what the standard is, don't care. I run Overland 2 rail brass passenger cars (20"0) through 56" radius mainline easily, 48" or even less in storage yards. True story. I don't blame anyone for quoting the NMRA, but really, I'm not sure that the MMRA rules most practical layouts. I would not be constrained by what the NMRA says in any event. Good luck.

@Rider Sandman posted:

Go back and look at the MTH catalogs of the time period. Every edition had countless 18” passenger cars, but nothing larger. The 21” stuff was GGD or the like and very expensive. I believe Lionel saw a void in the 21” ABS cars and saturation in the 18” cars. I think 15” cars were squeezed out by an evolving market - too small for the scale guys and too large and/or expensive for traditional guys, especially with both Lionel and MTH making really nice 12” cars for their traditional sets.

You're right about the market for 21" cars, as far as I know - I can understand there was a demand for them from a certain segment of operators. Whether it was sufficient to supplant all other sizes, I don't know.  As far as the 12" cars, they're too small for many engines, including much of the LionChief line, given that many of those diesels are in fact scale sized. The 15" cars will work for F3s and F7s (including the scale ones), and of course road switchers like Geeps (again including the scale ones), of which there are many.

These engines and 15" cars aren't so big that they can't run on, and look good on, 036 curve Fastrak layouts, which size probably dominates the market. Lionel probably had a good reason for chosing 15" as an ideal size for their streamliners when they started making them back in the 50s, and in those days these cars were designed to be able to run on 0-31.

As far as Lionel 15" cars being too expensive, we don't know, given that they have not been produced.  I see MTH has just announced some new 15" streamlined cars. Gotta be a market there, I'd think.

@christopher N&W posted:

I'm not sure what the standard is, don't care. I run Overland 2 rail brass passenger cars (20"0) through 56" radius mainline easily, 48" or even less in storage yards. True story. I don't blame anyone for quoting the NMRA, but really, I'm not sure that the MMRA rules most practical layouts. I would not be constrained by what the NMRA says in any event. Good luck.

I agree that the NMRA recommendations are maybe a bit high, but your 48” radius yard tracks are O96. I would venture a guess that fewer than 10% of 3-rail layouts have that size of curve (or larger) on their mainlines.

@Rider Sandman posted:

Go back and look at the MTH catalogs of the time period. Every edition had countless 18” passenger cars, but nothing larger.

Lionel does make heavyweight 18" cars.  I don't think there are any in this catalog but there usually are some.  They're nice.

What's weird to me is Atlas bought the 18" MTH tooling and has only done three sets since then.  We're in year 3 since they bought the tooling and they haven't even announced more (to be fair, they are doing Amfleet cars though). That's not exactly prolific.  And they proved they can get it done.  They cranked out those three sets from MTH's factory in the height of pandemic.

It's a weird business decision for Atlas to simply stop.  Like you alluded to, MTH did two catalogs a year with anywhere from 8-12 sets of 18" passenger carsper catalog.  They were cranking them out and someone (me!) was buying them.  MTH did that right up to their last catalog in 2020 so this isn't ancient history.  Then they stopped and no one picked up the slack.  Neither Atlas nor Lionel has attempted to fill in the gap.

I understand from Lionel's perspective.  They're just rolling along doing what they do.  But it's a real head-scratcher for Atlas since they actually made the investment in the MTH tooling.  Oh well.

@ptbarnm69 posted:

Thanks too all for your comments.

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Lionel just release a set with 18" cars? Black River? And doesn't the Lehigh excursion set have 18" cars? Mabe that is "THE END OF THE LINE" for the 18".

Thanks again.

And failed miserably at it! Total junk! The cars with the 4 wheel trucks are comically placed WAY too close to the center of the car. 027 cars look more realistic!

@ptbarnm69 posted:

IN GOING THRU THE 2023 BIG BOOK THERE WAS NO 18" PASSENGER CARS. FOUND ONLY 21" CARS.

WAS HOPING FOR SOME ADDITIONAL 18" MIDNIGHT SPECIAL CARS.

OH WELL THERE IS ALWAYS NEXT CATALOG.

Seriously? They have a total of TWO 21" car sets (which are long overdue, when's the last time they offered a 21" set?). They also happen to coincide with two of their latest offerings, the UP Big Boy (though why, because Big Boys never pulled passenger trains) and their new Dreyfus Hudson. Fact is, there aren't a lot of scale-ish sized passenger car sets released, by anyone, anytime. Sure, once in a while you'll see a generic set put out in several liveries, but c'mon...

I understand wanting 18" cars, because they fit better on many O layouts, but they're hardly prototypical, and it's hard to bang someone out for around $2000 (list, not counting an engine) for toys. Especially when there's tons out there on the 2nd hand market for way less.

For heavyweight passenger cars, I am fine with the ABS plastic versions in 15” & 18” sizes.  I have The following CB&Q plastic heavyweight cars:

Williams Pullman green in both 15” & 18” sizes

MTH RailKing in commuter Forest green in 15” size

Atlas-O Trainman in commuter Forest green 15” size

3RD Rail Pullman green head end cars in 18” size

Atlas-O Premier in Pullman green & in silver in 18” sizes

For streamlined Zephyr cars, I prefer the chrome plated aluminum cars because they look much more like stainless steel than silver plated ABS plastic cars.

I have the following:

Lionel, K-Line, MTH, Williams, & Weaver California Zephyr (All) & Burlington Texas Zephyr (Only Lionel) plated aluminum cars in 15” size.

MTH & Phoenix California Zephyr plated aluminum Cars in 18” size.

My Layout is under construction & will have both 72” & 84” diameter curves.  Accordingly, I avoid 20” & 21” passenger cars because their overhang on 72” & 84” curves appears unrealistic to me.

I do like the CB&Q GP20 Diesel & 2-8-2 Mikado steam locomotives in the Lionel 2023 V1 catalog.

CB&Q Bill

@BobbyD posted:

Wasn't there a post from Sunset/GGD that they had dropped the 18" project?

IIRC when they announced the price it was almost what their 21" cars cost and the enthusiasm (aka "Demand") vanished.

Yes Scott had plans to release a couple of sets in both 18” and 21”. New York Central and Santa Fe were two of them. I ordered a complete set of the 18” NYC streamline models. After several months I received an emailed they were cancelled for lack of interest.

Mike

@MikeH posted:

Lionel does make heavyweight 18" cars.  I don't think there are any in this catalog but there usually are some.  They're nice.

What's weird to me is Atlas bought the 18" MTH tooling and has only done three sets since then.  We're in year 3 since they bought the tooling and they haven't even announced more (to be fair, they are doing Amfleet cars though). That's not exactly prolific.  And they proved they can get it done.  They cranked out those three sets from MTH's factory in the height of pandemic.

It's a weird business decision for Atlas to simply stop.  Like you alluded to, MTH did two catalogs a year with anywhere from 8-12 sets of 18" passenger carsper catalog.  They were cranking them out and someone (me!) was buying them.  MTH did that right up to their last catalog in 2020 so this isn't ancient history.  Then they stopped and no one picked up the slack.  Neither Atlas nor Lionel has attempted to fill in the gap.

I understand from Lionel's perspective.  They're just rolling along doing what they do.  But it's a real head-scratcher for Atlas since they actually made the investment in the MTH tooling.  Oh well.

Agreed on all points, Mike.  I noted Lionel’s 18” heavyweights earlier in the thread - you’re right, they are very nice.  Like you, the lack of new releases from Atlas has been a head scratcher to me. Maybe the original release didn’t sell well given they were a bit more expensive in comparison to the last MTH runs.

So Atlas hasn't released any passenger cars since that first run they did 2+ years ago? So does this mean that they've stopped doing any passenger cars? I seriously doubt it. They do have a market, that is very certain. It could be that they are waiting to see what their competition/other manufacturers release for engines. If I recall, the Atlas/MTH cars they released were Pennsylvania, Southern, and B&O(maybe Reading in there too, don't remember all of them). I know Lionel had released Pennsylvania, B&O, and Southern in the catalog that had come out just before. I bought the Southern and B&O cars because I had ordered those engines and there wasn't at the time any cars by Lionel ran in that catalog. So it very much could be just a waiting game. When do they drop their next catalog(Atlas)?

@Yellowstone Special posted:

I’m sorry. But to me, plastic passenger cars are just wrong.

Everyone is entitled to spend their money any way they desire.  I think more than a few owners of GGD heavyweight cars have a differnce preference.   John

Suggestion:  If you want 15" or 18" Streamliners, learn to paint and decal, or contact Christine Braden.

@rattler21 posted:

Everyone is entitled to spend their money any way they desire.  I think more than a few owners of GGD heavyweight cars have a differnce preference.   John

Well, yes they are. For me, I don't do heavyweights. So, no matter.