Lionel Passenger Sets

The handsome aluminum cars weren't introduced until 1952 and unpainted. They would have been suitable for any road name ay the time. You have NO idea how blessed you younger guys have it today!

In 1997, they did offer a nice set, pictured on the cover with their PA’s in NYC.

@Little Stan posted:

I recently picked up a set of NYC 2333's and wondered why Lionel never offered a passenger set like they did with the Santa Fe units? No dome car (of course), but the baggage, two coach and the observation would have made a reasonable 20th Century Limited. Thoughts, anyone?

The 2500 series aluminum cars were available for separate sale.  My folks bought three (a baggage, coach and obs car) to go with the Southern 2356 AA's.  Could have been a Southern Crescent if I'd known of it at the time.

No reason a PW F-3 AA NYC couldn't make a 20th Century Ltd. with the separate purchase of a combination of the 2500 series cars.

The 2500 series cars would more closely approximate a "Empire State Express" as that train was equipped with Budd stainless cars and it was an all coach train as opposed to the "20th Century" that was a Pullman Standard equipped train, painted, and had no coaches.

My question is more a business and marketing question. Why didn’t they offer a passenger set, especially after positioning the NYC diesels to satisfy the east coast clients?

I would only be guessing but the 2500 Series cars are generic to any road and cheaper to market generic cars then a set with a limited market as the next question would be why no PRR cars as that road was bigger than the NYC at the time.

Lionel offered the PRR Congressional in 1955 which was the 2500 series tooling.  As I understand, the 2500 series cars were never offered with locomotives in sets.  They were fairly high end for the time so I suspect cost factored into not packing the car sets with locomotives.  They would have been expensive sets and out of the reach of many.

In that respect, it is not too different today.  High end passenger car sets are almost always sold separately from high end locomotives.

I haven’t checked all years but the 1950 catalog shows a Santa Fe 2343 with four 2500 cars (2190W) for 90 bucks. Yes pricey at the time but they did offer the cars in sets.

Pete

I think I read somewhere that even in the MPC era, getting paint to adhere to the aluminum was a problem. The extra cost to get the paint to stick, and to paint the cars, probably would have made the cars unaffordable.  The 1984 NYC passenger cars also suffer from easy paint chipping. I think the UP and SP cars may also have the adhesion problem.

My Dad ran his NYC F3's with an aluminum 'Lionel' Coach, a Baggage, two Vista Dome and an Observation.  As far as he was concerned it was the NYC.  At the turn of this century I picked up set of MTH aluminum's that were perfect matches but with the NYC road-name (a Sleeper and a Diner? - boxed away now).  Come to think of it, they are all boxed away!  Great cars, I also ran them years ago with a MTH RK Dreyfus and we still have a large Lionel Commodore Vanderbilt in the box, but I don't care for it at all.  Regardless, I appreciated this thread, learned a few things and enjoyed to conversation.  Thank you.

I think that that’s a great question. And, I have no idea.
I did eventually make my own as it had been on my wish list since I was about 11-12 years old. My mother took me to this Park Avenue apartment which could have been in a 1940’s Fred Astaire movie. She had some business dealings with the lady there . Two things really impressed me. One was this large room which was band ready with a setup of about a dozen sheet music stands (quite Fred Astaire actually).
The second was a loop of track on the dining room floor. And there it was. A defining moment in my life. There was a NYC ABA F3 with a string of aluminum passenger cars behind it. I almost lost it. Wow I thought. This is one lucky grandkid. So, I’ve wanted it ever since. So, as an adult I just got me one. I have a really nice 2344 ABA and about 7 extruded cars for it to pull.  And pull it it does - on a beautiful RailRax shelf.  I can look at it anytime and feel accomplished in life.
Alan