The only negative thing I could say was that there was no horn but I rectified that a couple of years ago and had a horn installed in it. I would run her at top speed with no consist and never flew off. She didn’t have all of the details in the world but I tell you, I loaded up every piece of rolling stock we had and she pulled it all without batting an eye.
1970 6-1187 Illinois Central Service Station Set Of course I don’t remember receiving this as a present but I definitely remember my first GP-9 or as I affectionately nicknamed it “Big Red” (even though it’s orange!). My Dad continued the tradition with “Santa Claus” and his giant magical display (more on that in a later article) and I picked it up from there. He started buying sets when he could late pre-war and through the 1950’s when my Dad and Aunt were growing up. I was born in the early 1970’s and it’s my Grandfather who started the whole Lionel train bug in my family. Turns out if you squint your eyes past the Kickapoo railway, whatever that is, there are some decent products that managed to somehow escape the factory. I like to think of myself as an optimist though, someone who has the tendency to focus on the positives even when the negatives are fairly overwhelming. The next step would be to make it a wind-up toy which would have eliminated the need for the motor and the transformer! It’s easy to look at sets like this and throw up a little in your mouth. There is absolutely nothing else that could have been stripped away from this thing.
There were no front or back wheels, the rolling stock only had 4 wheels total, heck the graphics on the package weren’t even that good and I think they only gave you an O-27 circle. I’m not an actual real life railroad buff so I don’t know whether there was ever a steam locomotive here in the US that didn’t have a tender. I think it’s absolutely justified with some of the flat out garbage that was produced. Some are just in flat out denial and refuse to even talk about it as if Lionel Collectors experienced Brigadoon in the mid 1960-s and woke up to Richard Kughn.
I think most collectors I encounter would rather that the years 1970-86 just didn’t exist.
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