Lionel 2015 Passenger Car Production Plan (Includes Cancellations)

So ... the new passenger cars (thinking of the ESE set, which I had initially planned to buy) will be longer, have "detailed" interiors, cost more and yet not have one of the critical items that's been "standard" on high-end passenger cars for years, and that every serious model rr'er will tell you makes your layout look more real - passengers?  

 

I had an older Premier set of NYC cars (before MTH upped the bar and started putting passengers in all their Premier cars) and remember the "quicksand" project it was to paint so many little people and add them to the cars - Not looking to repeat that.  Given unused MTH ESE cars are out there in the secondary market for a whole lot less money, with Kadee pads and fully detailed interiors with era-correct passengers, I'm not sure if the ESE set is as appealing...

 

Charlie Nassau - given the "light" catalogue description on interior detail (zero photos of interior), and so we can better asses the value of these cars and the ESE set, can you advise what about these cars makes you say the interior detail "will be fantastic?"  I have the Southern Crescent set and those cars have seats, passengers and even bathrooms with sinks and toilets.  So we've already seen that level of detail. What would make these cars better, given the lack of passengers? 

 

thanks. 

 

Peter 

Long empty passenger cars with no figures:  It sounds like the real world demise of passenger travel in America.

 

I prefer 18" cars to 15" cars, and I can't use 21" cars.  I prefer aluminum to plastic.  I prefer cars with figures to empty cars.  I even prefer cars with silhouettes to empty cars, since silhouettes give at least the illusion of bustling activity (active persons in all kinds of poses behind every window) with a full load of passengers, such as in the real world golden age of passenger travel in the USA.

 

Filling "detailed interiors" with passengers is just too time-consuming and too expensive for me to do.  Putting a few persons in each car looks like low use of passenger rail.  For that reason, I find cars with silhouettes more cheerful and more likely to stimulate the imagination than empty cars with "detailed interiors."  Just my preference.

Gordon, completely agree on the passenger issue.  I don't think I'd ever do it again, but I did undertake (last year - and before I knew what I was really getting myself into) to add between 15 - 20 passengers to a set of older NYC Premier cars and, wow, with that number of passengers, the "feel" is amazing in terms of liveliness and bustling rail service. 

 

PETER

 

It will be interesting come April when the MTH catalog makes its appearance if their Premier passenger cars will also be void of paying passengers.

Thanks for clearing me up on that.  I will delete my original erroneous post.  (I know it's been ages since StationSounds diners were offered, so I guess on that part I should have known better)

 

I totally missed it somehow when Lionel listed sets as 3 packs of 2 cars each (or was it old 2 pack "add-ons" from several different offerings that caused this to work out this way?).

 

-Dave

I'm glad someone else sees the glaring problems with the C&O cars. I don't think they are Budd cars as they appear to have Pullman Standard non-fluted roofs. However, there are mistakes on the car names/numbers, placement of the car number boards, black roof instead of blue, sliver trucks instead of blue, and fluting above the windows (not on actual C&O P-S cars). Concerning just the four car set the C&O did not have boat tail observation cars (had flat end) or streamlined baggage cars. Can't say much for Lionel's research effort. I would really like a set of C&O 21" cars, but these don't measure up.

 

Ken

Don't feel too bad, Dave.  I never understood why Lionel resorted to packaging the 18" aluminum cars as THREE 2-packs either.    In Derek's podcast, Mike Reagan alluded to this as Lionel being somewhat price-sensitive to folks making their own choice as to how long of a passenger train they'd want to create... so consumers could purchase the number of 2-packs they needed accordingly.

 

But Lionel could have packaged the 2-packs much more optimally, if that were truly the case.  For example, why not package the observation with a combine car?  Trains typically have only one of each.  Instead, Lionel packaged the combine with a vista-dome.  So if you want an extra vista-dome, you get a second combine car???    What good is that???

 

Nonetheless, it's nice to see the return of StationSounds diners in the 21" cars -- even though it seems nobody will be dining at the tables.  

 

David

Gromet.............

 

Thanks for the update on the Lionel passenger cars.

 

Regards,

Swafford

I ordered the C & O  E8 locomotive with the idea of also getting the passenger cars.  21" cars look ridiculous on my layout.  I hope the MTH passenger cars are still available.

I just hope they correct the name on the Texas Special Combine car. It should be Mirabeau Lamar not Birabeau. Mirabeau was the 2nd president of the Republic of Texas.

I noticed this too and put it down to a catalog typo but I suggest we write in to Lionel to make sure they get this straight lest there's another "Huckleberry Fin" clanger that marred the Legacy Mark Twain Burlington Zephyr. At this stage they have enough time to get it right.

Plus, the Texas Special never had dome cars. 

 

Also, the Rock Island never had dome's either, be they mid-train or on the observation.

 

Rusty

EXACTLY!!!  And well stated. 

 

More so, that's what made the Lionel 18" aluminum cars such an attractive alternative in the marketplace for years.  So what does Lionel do?  They nix their strongest play in the passenger car market... go to a "me to" strategy with ABS plastic... and worse yet, even cut out a minor but noticeable level of detail -- that being people to to populate the passenger cars. All of this, and the street-price seems rather close to the price-point of the former 18" aluminum cars with all the amenities.

 

The more we peel back the onion layers on these 21" passenger cars, the less I am impressed.  But I guess time will tell the real story.

 

Grand slam... or gross mis-calculation. 

 

David

I agree with David on these sets as a Grand Slam. 

 

At this point, it seems Lionel has been listening to us as a group. 

 

While I like the 18-inch cars, the market has spoken and we want scale length cars. 

 

Car specific details.

Flush Windows.

No goofy people to remove while adding our own, better detailed people.

Mounting pads for Kadee Claws

Kinematic couplers (a feature every O gauge manufacture should use).

Car specific windows.

New diaphragms as per car.

AND the long awaited station sound cars WITH new features.

Maybe in the future Lionel will have a way to reintroduce the 18 inch market using modified 21 inch tooling.

 

AND at very fair price compared to the other scale length cars available.

 

Now… I will want to see how the Stainless look is handled on the new cars before I make a decision. In the past, nobody has really done stainless on plastic in O gauge to my satisfaction. MTH came close with the PS3 Zephyr. I will also be interested in how they handle the dome in terms of correct or close to correct contours. Atlas is still not correct, but obviously close enough for the scale market.

 

Also, don’t forget, these are only the fluted side cars, as per Mike Reagan. There are many other options (smooth side, riveted, blunt end, boat tail etc) that Lionel can bring to market.

 

So in closing, I too like the direction these cars are headed, if not for only for reacting to market trends/requests, but also trying to fill a price sensitive area of the market.

 

Charlie

Just one final thought/comment on what appears to be the end-of-an-era for Lionel aluminum car production...

 

I was always hoping Lionel would produce the Norfolk Southern Office Car Special in aluminum during Norfolk Southern's 30th Anniversary.  But that timeframe has come and gone with no Lionel aluminum product offering.  Now THAT would have been THE ultimate way for Lionel to close out their aluminum passenger car production. 

 

Perhaps we can get Scott Mann to do a Norforlk Southern OCS!!! 

 

David

Definitely a grand slam for MTH!

 

I have two sets of Lionel 18" aluminum passenger cars and no (zero) 21" passenger cars of any kind.

 

I would regard any 21" cars as "display only."

 

MTH wins any future purchases of passenger cars by default in our household.

 

What it comes down to is how many other people are in the same situation as I am.

MTH must have changed colors on those particular cars, because several years ago I had to get rid of some MTH N&W cars because the maroon color was so far off that of my Lionel engine.

 

As far as other roads that require cars matching the engines, maybe you're thinking only of steam (and there, the UP grey is problematic as well), because color match is going to be a consideration with pretty much every diesel engine/passenger car matchup.

Well, it hasn't spoken for me or anyone else I know - 21" cars are useless to anyone except those with huge layouts, which is, in all likelihood, a significant minority. 

 

But no doubt this is only the first of wave of future offerings of various lengths of Lionel ABS passenger cars.

More than you think!    And this is where I think Lionel's new management team needs to approach 21" passenger car production with bit of caution. 

 

Admittedly, they haven't abandoned 18" passenger cars completely.  But if they do 18's beyond the aluminum versions catalog'd in the 2015 Signature Edition catalog, indications are any future 18's will also be ABS... which is a market MTH has cornered for years now.

 

Lionel is clearly leading with 21" cars now, and I certainly wouldn't wager any big dollars that the 21-inchers are gonna be a wide-spread "must have" in the same way folks here tripped over themselves ordering the Vision Line Big Boy in record numbers.  Two VERY different markets.  And if Lionel thought the Big Boy success might translate into increased market demand for full scale-length passenger cars, that could be a huge miscalculation.  Definitely worth watching this space in the future. 

 

David  

 

 

Some of you guys are really great at missing the point.    There are two 21" passenger car threads going right now, and there's some good commentary being presented on both threads.

 

Many of us were excited to see Lionel enter the 21" game, but all we're saying is it's a niche market at best.  The 18" size cars seem to appeal to most hi-railers who don't have HUGE layouts where the 21" cars would look their best.  And 15" size cars were the tradition for years, until hi-railers wanted passenger cars that were more realistic with detailed interiors and passengers.

 

Seems nobody can comment on anything these days unless they're blindly saying how terrific everything is or is gonna be.  But as another poster indicated in the other thread (and I'm paraphrasing a bit here), these 21" cars can be 1,000% prototypical... but if they won't "look right" on small to medium-sized home layouts, are lots of folks gonna buy them? 

 

THAT's the issue being raised. 

 

Is there a market for these?  Yes.  Is it a market with broad appeal?  That remains to be seen. 

 

David

I think it's funny that some folks think scale length cars are a niche market.  A lot of scale length cars have been made in the past by different manufacturers, and my guess is that Lionel's research suggests that they will sell fine.

 

It makes sense to me that if Lionel is investing in new tooling, that they start with the car length they think will sell the best.

 

Jim

May be since the dies can be changed for window configuration then possibly for length too? So new tooling could produce 15" 18" and 21"?  Heck of a cost savings.

"PJB" said, " I have the Southern Crescent set and those cars have seats, passengers and even bathrooms with sinks and toilets."

 

Can someone please tell me more about this set. number of cars, length of cars, model number -

 

thanks - rdeal

One needs to take almost any of the threads on OGR with a grain of salt.  While it might be true that the folks on this thread who are not happy with Lionel's decision to make 21" cars might be representative of the hobby, it is more than likely that it is not.  One can't confuse an OGR thread with a meaningful survey. 

 

An exception to this might be some the Sunset/3rd Rail threads on the 3RS sub-forum.  In this case, the manufacturer typically makes small production runs and OGR forumites may purchase a sizable percentage of the production run.  Don't know if the population size would be statistically significant, but the info would be much more meaningful.

 

I find it interesting that folks who have no inside knowledge about Lionel sales data are so quick to point out that Lionel has no idea what they are doing.

 

Jim

Yepper... just like all the the threads that surfaced quickly when Lionel yanked whistle-steam from their steamers a couple of years ago.  

 

David 

Jim, you and Charlie say "the market has spoken" and now Lionel thinks they can sell more 21" cars than they sold 18" cars. Have you guys tried searching for Lionel 18" aluminum streamliners at any of the big vendors? Grzyboskis, to name one has dozens maybe hundreds of 15" cars but only a handful, literally, of 18" cars. Same with Ro and Justrains. When they do come up for auction they usually sell for more than new.

I have 3 21" sets, all GGD and 3rd Rail (brass). The main reason I bought them is there were no 18" cars available as Lionel never made NYC 20th Century or Mercury cars and CC ESE cars rarely come up for sale and if they do they are priced higher than I paid for my 8 GGD cars. The problem is I can only run them on the clubs layout. Otherwise they sit on the shelf or in boxes. I could have replaced my Lionel Daylight and Super Chief 18" cars with GGD but would rather have cars I could run and not shelf queens.

I believe the niche being referred to is not people who want 21" cars but those who have the layout to run them.

 

Pete

Pete,

 

I have no inside Lionel knowledge, but have to believe that they have market research to show that they can sell scale length passenger cars.  I would also guess that Lionel probably doesn't care if we can run the cars or not, just that we buy them.

 

Maybe if Lionel is using modular tooling, 18" cars will happen in the future?

 

Jim

Maybe Lionel is eyeing the resale prices of K-Line 21" cars.

 

Or maybe they are appealing to the "collector" and "display" share of the market.

       
       


???

You do realize that you are making the exact opposite points as David despite thinking that the two of you are in agreement?

Peter

       
       


Yes, the Southern Crescent Legacy set featured prototypical 25" passenger cars with prototypical spacing between cars (they actually screw together and have the correct rubber outside diaphragms), constant volt LED lighting, all windows on all cars are functional and slide up and down, the RPO car has actual mail slots with 1:48 mail filling each slot, every car has prototypical railsounds (including snoring emanating from the sleeper car) - and all 4 cars together cost $250. ...Sorry, couldn't resist a little levity!

Actually, in all seriousness, the 4 cars are really well done 18" passenger cars. They thankfully include passengers and the passenger rooms contains bathrooms with sinks and toilets. The RPO car actually has some level of detail.  I would post some photos but I have the set packed. If you'd like a good view of them, check out Ericstrains.com review of these cars. I think he even has one apart to show the detail up close and personal. Highly recommended.

Peter

You're absolutely right about that David but I don't hold out much hope of a reversal in Lionel's apparent decision about passenger car figures despite the fact that I cannot see much cost difference/saving by not including them.

 

I have no doubt that he does see that! It's just the way he chose to express his disagreement.

Agree completely!  

 

It's times like this I wish we didn't have two threads running on the same topic, 'cause I think we hit on this element of the discussion in the other theead.  Namely, it's one thing to display an expensive locomotive.  It's an entirely different thing to expect that enthusiasts will "just display" 12-16' of passenger cars behind a 3-4' locomotive on a shelf.  That's the big wild card that warrants caution blasting full-speed ahead, but Lionel is gonna do what they're gonna do.  That decision has been made by the guys making the big bucks.    Some of us here are simply saying, "Really???".     That's all.

 

David

Some of us posted wondering about what the interior details on these 21" cars would look like given the catalogue and website give zero photos or specific details. And Charlie Nassau stated in a post that interior detail "will be fantastic."  You may recall I had asked him to expand on his comment.  Did he ever back up his statement or respond at all? 

Peter

David,

 

Seems nobody can comment on anything these days unless they're blindly saying how terrific everything is or is gonna be.  

Clearly, we both know this is a hilariously sarcastic comment.  Why not wait until the model is released and its actual faults can be pointed out, complained about, decried and the manufacturer can be berated?  

 

Do you believe a crusade on the OGR forum about how foolish it was for Lionel to remove the whistle steam feature from steam engines resulted in them reversing their decision and bringing it back to market?  Personally, I am very happy the feature is back, I just wonder if the activity on this forum contributed to Lionel's reversal.

You guys are missing the point!  A modular die system allows for multiple window configurations  as well as length. You have to build the full length first and test the waters first before you offer the scaled down versions. Iron The kinks out so to speak. Lionel has admitted that there will be generic cars ; domes, cause folks want them, and other cars as stand ins. I say lets wait and see. If they build something I want I will Buy instead of build, on that you can bet. All in all its a step forward for scale models and the hobby!!!!!!!!  Buy the way I own 6 Lionel passenger cars and that's it.

BTO means "leap before you look."  It requires blind trust that the product will meet or exceed buyers' expectations.  In the case of GGD, I believe that trust is merited.

 

For the most part and in the case of other manufacturers, however, I believe it is best to see with your own eyes before laying your money down.

Only Lionel knows the true answer, but it's fair to say many of us who discussed the whistle-steam issue here also conveyed our feelings in person to Lionel reps at York.  I suspect the same will happen here regarding passenger cars.  It will be a busy and tiring York for Lionel reps in attendance this April. 

 

Nobody is looking to "berate" Lionel -- either now or when products arrive.  What folks want is a product they can be proud to own and operate.  If the importers take the comments here as constructive, they'd be foolish to ignore such a focused group of toy train enthusiasts providing feedback.  Statistical significance aside, this group is very vocal -- and just may correlate to "free QUALITY marketing data" for the importers.

 

If you don't believe this group has critical mass, I'd suggest you ask Charlie from Nassau Hobbies and Pat from Patrick's Trains how much incremental business they've garnered by being as active as they've been the past couple of years here on the forum.    It's none of our business to know the fine details, but I'm sure they'll acknowledge that their participation here has been well worth their while -- or they would have stopped a long time ago.

 

Back on topic with passenger cars though... the decision to cancel 18" aluminum cars in many of the prior-announced roadnames has real ramifications beyond the cars themselves.  I'm still on the fence about 21-inchers... So by canceling the 18" MKT Texas Special (in aluminum), I'll very likely also cancel the E8 diesels I had pre-ordered as well if I untimately decide not to order the "replacement" 21-inchers.  If I were deciding today, I'd cancel the MKT diesels on order and forgo the 21" cars.  Ideally, I was really hoping Lionel would still produce the MKT 18" aluminum cars, but that's not gonna happen now. 

 

Not all of us who had ordered 18" aluminum cars are gonna just blindly sign up and pre-order the "replacement" 21-inch ABS plastic versions.  Count on it.

 

David

This must be something new. What kind of sorcery allows this to happen?

 

TRW