Lionel Trains Announces Norfolk Southern Commemorative Heritage Series

Well that didn't take LIONEL very long to do!  I have always wanted a modern diesel like the SD70ACe, plus I love Lackawanna.  Gonna kill 2 birds with one metaphor.

Gentlemen... Start your wallets!   

 

Rusty

 

I think I'm going to pee my pants

 

I thought this was actually a case where Lionel built the models first and NS decided to follow up by building the real thing. Think of how confusing this is going to be for the next generation of O-guagers to figure out in 20-30 years..."was this one part of Lionel's first Heritage Series of imaginary engines or the second Heritage Series that consisted of real engines?"

lets see who can "collect them all" haha

This certainly will move some product for Lionel.

Simple:

 

There WILL be prototype locomotive images of the of the actual NS units.

 

There will NOT be prototype locomotive images of the Lionel fantasy versions.

 

Unless, the future O Gaugers will be too lazy to google/bing/yahoo/whatever the Norfolk Southern.

 

Rusty

Pity the dealers that still have the fantasy heritage engines in stock. They're going to have to do some serious discounting to sell them.

 

Ken

I wonder if the ES44's will be the die-cast "vision line"-esque ES44's or if Lionel will go cheap and go back to plastic for these. I hope they stick with the die-cast versions, personally.

Well, lets see now...  Even "cheap" plastic, the 8 ES44's loco's will probably MSRP out at $4399.92 total, barring any price increases over the release span.  It'll be about $9899.82 MSRP for all 18.

 

You're street price may vary, state and local takes etc...

 

Hope they don't release them all at once!

Rusty

This is fantastic news.....................................Thanks Lionel!!!

 

Regards,

Swafford

Seriously, I hope this isnt all at once. Not that I would even consider buying them all, I'm sure some of you will do it... and thats a pretty good chunk of change. I'm sure MTH will be following with a similar announcement in due course and there'll be plenty of these to go around and sell like hot cakes.

Link to the NS renderings

 

http://www.nscorp.com/nscporta...heritage_images.html

 

I would have preferred the earlier red Norfolk and Western with the Script logo like the original Geeps but...  

 

I'm really happy with the original NS red and yellow.

 

Richard

Frank call that artist fellow up and tell him you will help him out.

 

Thank you Rich!

 

Thank you Lionel.

 

Thank God I have a job to pay for all these roads that I have to have. PRR, Reading, NS, Southern,...

Ditto !!!  Time to start doubling down on those Powerball tickets!!  

 

- Mike

I don't intend to buy one/any, but those can be famous last words. I do steam and
electric, mostly, and I would like to get the gumption up to sell most of my diesels.

But I'm really going to look at the NYC SD70; prefer GE, and not hot for lightning
stripes, but NYC always makes my ears perk up. Dummies, I hope?

No Penn Central?

 I'm sure MTH will be following with a similar announcement in due course and there'll be plenty of these to go around and sell like hot cakes.

 

Also announced today (see my thread). After the NS made their press release Andy got on the phone.

and another shocker...   

 

If NS is licensing these models, Lionel may have an "exclusive"