Lionel Wabash Bluebird 21" Passenger Set

J Daddy posted:

Is there a way to drop the body down lower over the trucks... the " high water flood " look is really bothersome. 

Not without significant changes to the truck bolsters. The stamped sheet metal bolster would have to be lowered and then the top of the third rail pickup would have to be insulated to keep it from shorting to the sheet metal frame of the car.

I really like the packaging change. The 4 Pack has Windows on both sides of the box. It took just a few minutes to get all of the cars out if the box and on the tracks. I don't need an individual box for each car. The injection molded snap top plastic cradles are perfect. Way better than all that styrofoam. 

Dome lighting or not, as many people have said, I'm very Happy with these cars. They look great traveling around my layout. Thanks Lionel for making the Bluebird a part of my collection! 

TrainingDave posted:

J Daddy posted:

Is there a way to drop the body down lower over the trucks... the " high water flood " look is really bothersome. 

Not without significant changes to the truck bolsters. The stamped sheet metal bolster would have to be lowered and then the top of the third rail pickup would have to be insulated to keep it from shorting to the sheet metal frame of the car.

That is a real bummer. I like the cars but they look like they are way too high off of the trucks.

beautiful set, and I love your classic tubular track!!!

Ever notice how hard it is to see outside when in your house at night, with the lights on? Turn the lights off and you can suddenly see outside! Amazing how that works.

Now, if we installed a lighting PCB in the vista dome it would have required screws to mount it to the roof of the vista. This would have made it visible from the side PLUS there would be wires running down to the car body (we haven't quite perfected wireless power yet, but its likely on the same container with Fastrack Expander Paste!).

Had we installed lighting in the dome, passengers would complain about the reflective glare and that they could not view the stars at night. Hence, no lights in the vista domes!

Thanks!

Mike

Mikado posted:

... Had we installed lighting in the dome, passengers would complain about the reflective glare and that they could not view the stars at night. Hence, no lights in the vista domes!

...

Passengers?  Complaining?  My set didn't come with any passengers, so I don't think we'll be hearing anybody complaining up there in those domes.  

Subtle floor lighting might have been a real cool effect.  Perhaps for V2.0  

David

This is a tough crowd!

Almost bought the Wabash set at the Allentown show today.  Pete Costa had a 6-car set on display in boxes.  Catl'g pics do NOT do these cars justice!   Very smart-looking appearance for this set.

Would have been quite the impulse buy, but then I'd need to find some motive power for it too.  One thing always leads to another.  So i excercised a little self control.   Perhaps another day.  

David

Personally, I would much prefer lighted domes primarily to spark memories of those magical and beautiful silver Lionel (and Flyer) passenger cars when we were kids.  Great memories too!

Would seem there have been several excellent suggestions for modifications when you are adding the much-needed passengers. Perhaps drilling the holes and maybe covering them with translucent tape would be the easiest and best? That would add the light from the floor and appear the most prototypical...

I'm asking this for a friend. How were these cars packed? Did the boxes come with bags? Were the 2 packs packed two to a box? Any info would be appreciated. Thank you.

Bill

NSBill posted:

I'm asking this for a friend. How were these cars packed? Did the boxes come with bags? Were the 2 packs packed two to a box?  ...

Bill, unless you're looking for something specific to the Wabash 21" set, take a look at my "first look" Texas Special thread from last week.  There are pics of the packaging there.

My Texas Special set came from Charlie Ro with an outer shipping carton that was created from the 4-pack's shipper, then extended a bit to hold the 2-pack product carton as well.  So everything arrived in one outer box, if you follow what I'm describing.  And I'm sure Charlie's crack shipping staff used the 2-pack's outer shipping carton for other product they were shipping.

Each car is wrapped in clear plastic, and then inserted into white PLASTIC liners -- not foam as with prior products.  All cars are visible through window cut-outs in their respective product cartons.  The 4-pack has window cut-outs on both sides of the product box:  2 in front, 2 in back.  The 2-pack only has window cut-outs in the front of the 2-pack product box.  The cars are not boxed individually anymore.

Hope that helps.

David

Rocky Mountaineer posted:

NSBill posted:

I'm asking this for a friend. How were these cars packed? Did the boxes come with bags? Were the 2 packs packed two to a box?  ...

Bill, unless you're looking for something specific to the Wabash 21" set, take a look at my "first look" Texas Special thread from last week.  There are pics of the packaging there.

My Texas Special set came from Charlie Ro with an outer shipping carton that was created from the 4-pack's shipper, then extended a bit to hold the 2-pack product carton as well.  So everything arrived in one outer box, if you follow what I'm describing.  And I'm sure Charlie's crack shipping staff used the 2-pack's outer shipping carton for other product they were shipping.

Each car is wrapped in clear plastic, and then inserted into white PLASTIC liners -- not foam as with prior products.  All cars are visible through window cut-outs in their respective product cartons.  The 4-pack has window cut-outs on both sides of the product box:  2 in front, 2 in back.  The 2-pack only has window cut-outs in the front of the 2-pack product box.  The cars are not boxed individually anymore.

Hope that helps.

David

Thank you for that info David. Were the boxes themselves in plastic bags. The friend I'm asking for is a bit of a stickler about the packaging. He thinks that Pete probably gave him the set you mentioned in a previous post, and it's missing the outer bags and shipping carton for the 2 pack and so now he's all worked up over it.

Bill

Bill, i do not recall the 4-pack or the 2-pack product boxes coming in bags.  If your friend is thinking back to the days when these sets came in a product box surrounded by a clear plastic bag with a piece of tape labeled "factory sealed", those days appear to be history.  

All the importers are cutting corners everywhere they can.  Last year, I purchased two "premium sets":  Lionel's N&W Pocahontas passenger set, and an MTH CSX freight set with loco and Gunderson cars.  Neither set came packaged inside a fancy "set box".  Just individual product boxes packaged inside a brown shipping carton. 

I see in another thread that MTH is due to ship the CSX Safety Train set in a couple of weeks, and I'm not expecting any set box for that set either.  We'll know pretty soon.

In the big picture, there are certainly worse things to "get worked up over".  So tell your friend to just enjoy the trains.  

David

Rocky Mountaineer posted:

Bill, i do not recall the 4-pack or the 2-pack product boxes coming in bags.  If your friend is thinking back to the days when these sets came in a product box surrounded by a clear plastic bag with a piece of tape labeled "factory sealed", those days appear to be history.  

All the importers are cutting corners everywhere they can.  Last year, I purchased two "premium sets":  Lionel's N&W Pocahontas passenger set, and an MTH CSX freight set with loco and Gunderson cars.  Neither set came packaged inside a fancy "set box".  Just individual product boxes packaged inside a brown shipping carton. 

I see in another thread that MTH is due to ship the CSX Safety Train set in a couple of weeks, and I'm not expecting any set box for that set either.  We'll know pretty soon.

In the big picture, there are certainly worse things to "get worked up over".  So tell your friend to just enjoy the trains.  

David

David thank you for replying back. He's always giving me a good laugh about how anal he can be with this stuff!

Bill

I'll just reiterate what seems to have been said.  The domes are definitely wrong for these cars.  (I rode this train many times, by the way.)  They are styled after Pullman Standard and not the Budd curved glass design.  The glass at the ends of the dome is also done differently between those two prototype manufacturers.  (Yes, one Pullman Standard dome was added later with smooth sides because they couldn't get another Budd built one fast enough.)  If the car has fluting, it should have the curved glass dome.  The look of the train, to my eye, is very dependent on having the correct domes.  And it is true that the Observation should be front of center.  There are a number of other nits and picks I suppose, and I didn't expect the quality of Golden Gate cars, and these are not at that price point, either.  But wrong domes and misplaced domes is certainly less than what I expected.

Chuck K.

Chuck K. posted:

... I didn't expect the quality of Golden Gate cars, and these are not at that price point, either.  ...

As many here should know by now, I'll be the first to take Lionel to task for their pricing structure.  But for the most part, the prices of their passenger cars remain "reasonable".   Now we can argue that ABS cars should be considerably lower than their aluminum predecessors.  But we're also paying for the new tooling, so the price-points of ABS are essentially picking up a shade below where prices of aluminum cars left off.  Over in my Texas Special "first look" thread, I calculated roughly $110/car for the new ABS cars -- not including the StationSounds diner which skewed the average price/car to $125.

As a point of comparison, I just received a GGD El Capitan 60' RPO car from Scott Mann today.  It must have been an unclaimed "left-over" from the first production run, since I had an RPO and an extra lounge car on standby.  Very handsome car, by the way.  But we're talking $279 for this gem.  So that's where prices are heading for finely detailed aluminum passenger cars today.

David

I contacted Lionel's customer service mainly about the incorrect domes and got the sort of reply I expected:

"We apologize this is not as expected.  We did check and this is how they are manufactured.  We are not remaking the roof or shell to correct this difference."

The person answering did not even understand the product well enough to realize that the dome is a separate part not requiring a new "roof" or "shell".

Interestingly, the K-Line California Zephyr cars did the iconic Budd dome rather well.  It's ironic that Lionel now has all the K-Line assets, but couldn't get the Blue Bird's dome right.

Chuck K.

Gosh folks, last I looked this topic is posted in "Hi-Rail, O27 and Traditional 3-Rail O Gauge" forum, not in any of the Scale forums.

I still think its a darn good looking set. Of course, I am more into  operating fun than minute details of any of these trains. I am one of the outliers who isn't into all the minutiae some are. Perhaps that discussion would be better left to the Scale Forums.

As long as the set is being enjoyed by the originator of this topic, then so be it. I for one would love to have a set like this in the 15" Class of passenger cars that would run on my layout.

To each their own.

I still have extra stock of all four offered road names in both the 4 car and 2 car sets, plus the Empire State add on 2 cars sets.... On sale on our website.

For that matter, I still have extra Hudson's and the Hudson passenger sets.

Thanks....... 

Regarding dome lighting, these were a daylight domeliner Chicago to St. Louis.  So don't worry about dome lighting and just make sure your room lighting is always on nice and bright to be prototypical.

Chuck K.