In my opinion, freight sets dominated the set offerings of post-war Lionel Trains. In most of the catalogs I have seen it appears the sales appeal of operating cars clearly topped the elegance of a fine passenger car set. In fact, I can't recall having seen a Lionel passenger set anywhere when I was a kid in the 50's and 60's. All of my cousins and neighbors and uncles had freight sets of some sort, equipped with milk and cattle cars and cranes.

My personal interest in passenger cars has come about in my second wind in the hobby, and I admit I have a number of passenger car offerings on my wish list. However, acquiring many of these is easier said than done. In addition, with the limited size I have available for my layout, I have decided that many of the post-war passenger sets would dominate my relatively small (12x12) layout.

Mostly through e-bay and on-line train forums, I have seen photos of most post-war passenger car production. In selecting a passenger car style for my layout, I had a number of choices. These included:

TINPLATE VERSIONS - The post-war tinplate cars, while an excellent size, seemed out of place and out of date to me. While tin plate has its allure for some Lionel aficionados, the tin plate look is inconsistent with the realism I want for my layout. There were two cars in a tinplate set, starkly named "Observation" and "Pullman" and these came in three different offerings - blue, dark green and a rust or deep maroon color scheme.

WESTERN & ATLANTIC - While I have seen these cars in person, they have no real appeal to me. They have an 1800's western design and may have been used with the "General" engine. Like the tinplate cars mentioned above, they seem to be the right size, but they would be out of place on my layout, which is generally themed in the northeast in the 1940's.

BUDD CARS - I admit I would not mind having these tooling around the Lionel Lines, although I suspect they would be a bit hard to come by, and it is a low priority. From what I can gather, there were two powered Budd cars and two non-powered units - baggage and passenger.

MADISON CARS - Introduced in the late 1940's, the Madison cars had the names Madison, Irvington and Manhattan and were nearly 15" in length. These have a classic passenger car look and are finished in brown.

ALUMINUM CARS - There are a wide variety of sets of aluminum passenger cars manufactured by Lionel in the post-war period. These are attractive cars and I originally thought I might use many of these on my eventual layout. A number of points changed my mind. First and foremost, they are long. I would guess they are in the 15" range, which would look funky and cumbersome going around small diameter curves, such as O31 and O42. While these small diameter curves and the ever present third rail make realism an unrealistic goal, the overhang spanning a curve would be more than I was willing to live with. In addition, the aluminum cars appear to show wear and damage easily. Nearly all examples I have seen in person have unforgiving "wings and dings" in the surface.

Among the sets Lionel manufactured were a "Presidential" set featuring McKinley, Harrison and Garfield. These came in the standard designs of Pullman, Dome and Observation.

A really extraordinary set was dubbed the "Congressional" series, which flew under the Pennsylvania flag. These featured the names William Penn, Molly Pitcher and Alexander Hamilton in the Pullman, Dome and Observation designs. Beautiful cars and probably notoriously expensive.

Along the same lines as the "Congressional" cars were the "Canadian Pacific" cars. Lastly, were the "Lionel Lines" Pullman, Dome, Observation and Baggage cars. There appear to be more variations of these than I can count.

2400 SERIES - With all of these possibilities exhausted, I landed on using the 2400 series plastic cars for the Lionel Lines. These cars are compact - probably measuring around 10" in length - which makes them well suited for my small diameter curves. The overhang is minimal on O42 and they look quite natural on this type of layout. There are also a broad range of selections available.

I had the good fortune to have a set of the green 2400 series offered to me on an on-line train forum and these are by far the nicest I have. The modest three car consist also works well on my relatively short straights.

While I have also managed to acquire the 2430 red letter versions, there are also black letter versions of the same design. These feature gray roofs with black trim.

I have a keen interest in obtaining a set of the 2440 series, which feature red trim and are available in the same names of Clfiton, Summit, Newark and Elizabeth. The vivid red stripes on these cars against the silver background is striking, however, it is also problematic as chips in the red paint are very obvious.

Issued with a Union Pacific ALCO set is a really interesting set of 2400 Series cars in yellow with red trim and black roofs. Like the 2400 green set I own, there is not a dome car in the set - only two Pullmans and an Observation car. These use the New Jersey town names of Plainfield, Westfield and Livingston. Somewhere along the line I want to acquire this set - even if it has its roots in Union Pacific, although the name Union Pacific is not on the cars.

Hopefully in the future these pages will feature the aforementioned 2440 and Union Pacific series. Stop back and see the new additions as they arrive at the Lionel Lines.