(upbeat music) Fresh off the RPO car, the long-awaited Line-L Volume 2 catalog is here. What hot new items catch our attention and who's going to have their wallet go into witness protection? We ask your burning questions and get the inside scoop from the fantastic folks at Line-L. All this and more. So get your ticket from the station, grab a seat and make sure you don't miss the train. What? (upbeat music) - Good evening, everyone. And thanks for tuning into episode 81 of the miniature models podcast. I'm one of your hosts, John Schwartz. And with me, as always, are my fellow co-hosts, Matt Rajford, Matt Zee and Johnny. Gentlemen, how are we tonight? - We're doing pretty good, man. I'm always excited to do these catalogs. I get to do them twice a year. So always a great time to talk with Ryan and the Line-L folks and all of our guests. So we're looking forward to tonight. - Our rebellion failed, the match are back. - I know. - Can't get rid of us. - No, he can't do it, right? So we've got like five episodes without me, you know? - The John Userpers will not, you know, complete their quest. So it is really, really great to be back. Yeah, I have missed the last couple of episodes, but it's nice to be back, especially for the catalog episode, which is always really fun to go over with the Line-L folks and our special guests, fortunate as well. Let John introduce them though. - Yes indeed, we have some fantastic guests. It is great that you guys are back. We've missed you both dearly. And we've got a full crew on board of not just you guys, but we've got some special guests as well. From Line-L, we have got Megan, Corey and Ryan. Guys, thank you so much for joining us for another fantastic show. We had an absolute blast last time and we are super, super, super excited to have you guys back again. - Well, thank you for having us back. We're glad to be here. Yes indeed, thank you so much. And from YouTube, we have got our friends, Pichy, Eric and Mr. Sid as well. Guys, thank you also for being here with us tonight. - Thank you for having us on. - Great to be here. - Yeah, I'm excited to be back. - Oh yeah, we are gonna have a good one tonight. Again, thank you everybody for being here. And we have got a bunch of stuff to go over. So we are gonna dive straight into this fantastic catalog. All right, so right out of the gate, we have got a fantastic rendition of the Vision Line GG1 coming back since, I think it's been a while since we've had this one in the catalog and there are a ton of new road names and offerings in this one, some really interesting different ones. Do you wanna tell us a little bit about this one, Ryan? - Sure, one of my favorite locomotives personally of all time, Prototyper, model in any scale. And you're right, this was the first time back in the catalog as a full-scale version since 2016. This was the first time we visioned the GG1. And since then, we've made a few upgrades and changes, but kept also a lot of the great features and was already a really promising and really strong locomotive. So these have the die-cast body, either the welded or riveted versions, riveted body styles, I should say, with a variety of detail options between them as well to reflect changes that were made over the years. There's some different pilots, different MU-host configurations, things like that, things around the windows. Feature-wise, these are like a normal legacy diesel, but up on steroids a bit. So you've got stereophonic sound with the speakers. It both ends with the locomotive that really helps with the sound system balance in here. Dual motors, of course. We have redone the gearboxes on these to make them a little bit more smooth running, particularly going down hills than the last round of vision GG1s were. We had to redesign the gears there to accommodate that a little bit better. And then I think everyone's favorite feature on these really is the panographs. They operate prototypically, so the rear pan is normally in the up position when you're moving forward. So if you reverse direction, the lead pan should come up, the rear pan go down or vice versa. The panographs are sprung, so they do have a nice bounce. If you have installed catenary over your layout, they'll ride along that nicely. If you haven't, they'll just reach up skyward. And the train will run just nevertheless. It runs on the power of imagination, so we're all good to go there. You get the little sparking LED feature up on the crossbars, which is also really cool, along with the catenary arcing sound that plays. If your railroad does have tunnels or low bridges or clearance issues, there are switches on the pams so that you can lock them down manually. And then they will not raise as it's going around the layout, so you don't have to worry about tearing off your panographs on low clearances. There's also de-icing mode, so that if you're running your trains and you want to simulate a winter run, sometimes they would double pan so that the lead panograph basically acted as an ice scraper on that wire. So you have that option in there as well, which is a neat feature in here. Of course, directional head lighting, the class lights, cab lights. We've got fan driven smoke for the steam generator on these as well. So you have that as an option. All of the, you said everything you expect in a vision locomotive, crew talk will be road number specific on these vision engines. And they're quite a good locomotive and they will do an O54 curve, I believe, is what we put on these. I have to blow that up and look at it. My eyes are shot, but they do have a good bit of overhang, but they'll negotiate a nice tight curve too. - That's absolutely fantastic. Yeah, no, these have always been really popular and it means a freaking GG one for crying out loud. It's one of the most iconic engines ever and the fact that you guys are constantly improving your vision line stuff and keeping the stuff that we love. I mean, one else known for fun features and stuff. So getting the panographs and then hearing that you guys are improving stuff is absolutely great. And you guys have done some really, really good schemes this time too. I think a couple that have never been done in O before, I could be wrong on that, but I think there's at least one or two. - It's possible. I mean, a lot of people have made GG ones, so there's some I know we haven't done before, but that doesn't mean that somebody else out there hasn't. Let me correct myself on one thing before the internet police take me away. This has an O72 minimum curve, not O54, but still a good looking locomotive. The passenger cars that we have in the cab level do O54. So for paint schemes, we went all over the place. And that's one of the things I love about the GG one is you can never have too many of them. And you can get a dozen of these things and not duplicate a paint scheme and still have more to go. So we chose a variety here, some that we haven't done in the last round or last several rounds of these or never, as you mentioned, which should be nice for people who are looking to fill out their collections a little bit more. And then we also have a lot of trains and equipment to go with the various paint schemes as they would be appropriate. We've tried to group them somewhat along those lines in the catalog to help guide you in how to match things up. But you don't have to take our word for it. You can pair the little locomotives, however you see fit with the trains that you like to run. - So I wanna ask a quick question before we keep diving into the GG one of the passenger sets. So you mentioned redoing the gearing for them to improve the way they run. I know a few people with the last run of vision line GG ones that had issues with them actually just starting, kind of like a pooling power issue that they basically would stall and then you'd have the flash and cab light. Do you think that as part of that regearing that will help with that or is there some kind of reprogramming that's gonna be done with these new ones to accommodate kind of like a load when they first started and once they're off, they're kind of good or what is the thinking behind that? - Yeah, during the follow up from the last round of GG ones, I remember Dave taking a very long look at these. This was actually the first vision project that Dave had a chance to work on. He'd just come to the company a few years or maybe even months before this one came into the picture. And so we did a pretty deep dive on these afterwards to find out how we could make it better to next go around and the gearing was looked at pretty heavily as the final culprit more so than code or motor capacity. And what we found was that while the gearboxes have been made back drivable, which is the legacy standard, you've basically got too low to modus back to back. So one set of gears is always going backwards. So they had to be back drivable in both directions, if that makes sense. - Yeah, and so redesigning the pitch of the gears seems to have solved a lot of those problems for this go around. - That's good to hear. 'Cause obviously I'd imagine these will be very popular and obviously that was an issue with the prior run. And I guess it's deterred some people I know from purchasing the old runs. But if obviously if these are going to be improved, that's great to hear. Yeah, but that was just something I was curious about is I'd actually seen a couple come through my shop and I ended up just making them work as they were. They were never catastrophic in the way they would not work. It was just one of those issues, sometimes they would start on the grade or something, or like you said, going downgrade and there'd be some kind of binding or something in that it was solved. - I had to jump in here and say the passion cars that you guys have selected are fantastic. All these sets are very eye catching. Really happy to see the shadow line cars come back for the pens he set there, but especially the American railroads that put the golden spikes in a little bit and Sid and I have owned that set, pastures from MTH and past, and we both owned the Birx. I owned the legacy 759 American railroads where Birx and he had the MTH. But finding those cars is literally impossible. So the fact you guys have done them accurately and in 21 inch form is fantastic. The GG1 looks great, the cars look fantastic. The fact you guys even have the barcodes on the side of the B60 is just like the prototype is a great touch. So I have to commend that. That's just fantastic work there. - Go ahead. - No, they're talking about the American railroad. I thought about buying different makes of cars and making my own, but to see this, it's just fantastic. When I saw this, my auto is great. - Yeah, this is a set I've wanted to do for a couple of years and it felt like a good time to bring it into the mix. As you mentioned, we did get the B60s. We've got the tooling in here that is more accurate to these cars than versions that have been done in the past. A lot of the cars, a few of the cars came from had Pennsylvania heritage as to them. The baggage cars, the observation car, the twin unit diner. So the tooling for those is spot on. And then we used our UP, ACF coaches and dome car, which is really close as well for a lot of the cars that we have in the rest of the line. The real train had a few more cars in it than this, but this will put together a pretty healthy and respectable consist for anybody who's running it behind this or the 759. And I think if I remember correctly, 844 pulled it for the last little leg in Utah. So there's another engine that you could put in there with it as well. - Yeah, that's a really fun set. Literally everything pulled that train. So no shortage of motive power for sure. - And then the GG1 definitely did not get repainted after that one trip. So it lingered in that for a while. So you could run that with whatever hodgepodge of pen central equipment you wanted to string behind it and be perfectly right. - Yeah, those concepts behind that GG1 post excursion are quite interesting. I know there's like a mail train of some sort, I think, or some sort of head and equipment train that I've seen it pulling in past. So yeah, it'll be really cool to see what people come up with. - It's also, I know someone's gonna bring it up, so that might as well bring it up. It's also very cool to see that you're paying homage to Lionel Heritage with all the post-war inspired stuff. 'Cause the GG1 was an iconic post-war model. So you have the GG1 with Irvington cars and then I think you have some aluminum cars and a GG1. That's just really cool to see. And it kind of, I guess, might give us a little taste of what we could see maybe next year. - Yeah, got the anniversary of what I'm doing. - Yep, we are on the verge of a big 125 year anniversary. And this catalog, the GG1 sort of ease our way into that. We've got so much good stuff to draw from over 125 years that honestly packing it into one or two catalogs just wasn't really going to happen. So I let it spill out a little bit early here on the precursor. As you said, the GG1 is sort of one of those locomotives that if not top three, certainly top five or six have the great line of Lionel icons. And so it was fun to do a couple of versions based on those earlier Lionel models. We've got the 2332 in the set with some add-on cars there as well. And then the red version for folks. That one, the locomotive is available exclusively through the LCCA. So you want to call them to order that. But the aluminum passenger cars will be available through all channels for sale. So because honestly, what can't you put a Lionel lines, aluminum passenger car train behind and have it look awesome. - Exactly. I love that you guys. This is such a small thing. I'm sorry, get it. - No, I was just saying that like those cars will, so many people will just buy those cars 'cause they're a modern equivalent to the old cars. - The post for sale, and I saw that go ahead John, sorry. Well, I was just gonna say on the same topic at a post for sale, I love that you even angled the set like the original catalog illustration. That's such a nerdy thing to like see. But like that's so cool that you guys did that. I love that. - Yeah, we had some fun staging things for the catalog. And you tried to stay somewhat true to the original 1947 set for this. Obviously, everything scaled up a little bit and it's full featured. And then with the add on cars, you've got again, the vision baggage car, the station sounds diner, and then the observation car. If you just wanna flush that train out a little bit more and make it a little bit more impressive on the layout, or you can keep it more true to the three car original. - Yeah, it's a really cool set. When I saw this and saw the American railroad, I kind of told Johnny, I'm like, this set's so cool. I love them all, very nice and very cool set. There was a question on the discord about the congressional and the senator, the difference between them and I had a separate question about the aluminum cars. - Sure, so the congressional and the senator in real life were pretty much sister passenger trains. When they zip by you at, you know, track speed on the corridor, you'd be really, really, really hard pressed to tell them apart, unless you were really good with passenger car names. There were a few different accommodations in some of the lounge cars and how they were configured, but from the outside, they were essentially identical. Of course, all the coaches and the trains were identical, and a lot of those cars could get swapped back and forth as needed. So on the model, the only things that will be distinctive will be the names on the sides of the cars, which again, you can kind of swap back and forth. Of course, the drum head on the observation car will be either the senator or the congressional, and then for the station sound dining cars, they'll announce the two different trains, right? So the car that you see pictured on the train, on the page with the senator cars, will announce the senator, and likewise for the congressional, that dining car announces the congressional in its station sound announcements. So other than that, you can mix and match to your heart's content if you want to stretch the consist of one and get both of the two packs of coaches. You can do that. Likewise, the heavyweight simulated shadow line cars, those were used as needed on either of the trains, so you could get those and add them in there and stretch the contest further too, if you'd like, regardless of whether, they weren't just using the Congo and never used on the center. They were put in whenever and wherever needed on those trains. - Okay, so here's a question. What are the shadow line cars? I've never heard of that. - So the Pennsylvania had enough equipment to run these two trains, premier trains, on a regular basis, assuming traffic levels stayed relatively consistent and nothing broke. But as they would find out occasionally if they had higher than expected ticket sales, or they had more equipment that was in the shop than they would have preferred. Rather than sticking a Tuscan red car in the middle of the train, which would stick out like a sore thumb, they took four heavyweight cars, old Pullman cars, and reconfigured them as coach and lounge cars, and painted them in a simulated stainless steel color and used a shadow line paint effect to make them look like the sides of the cars were corrugated. And then they would tuck those into the consist as needed so that they just so they blended in with the rest of the train a little bit more. - That's really cool. I didn't know that, that's pretty cool. - And we've done that shadow line effect a few times in the past on some equipment. Other railroads did it as well. The Santa Fe had a few cars like that off the top of my head and there were others. And so we've tried it. The paint effect works just as well on the model as it does in real life. It really does give you that corrugated look even though it's a perfectly flat side. And so we thought, yeah, let's add those in here. It wasn't easy enough add into the set and makes it fun. - Yeah, I can attest the, I have the Chesy Greenbrierr from a few years ago. And it, you guys did bet on the tender. - Yes, we did, yes. - And I remember when I first got it, I was like, I couldn't tell just how to glance this wheel or obviously it's just paint, but it does look really good. It does a good job of giving that ribbing effect. - I have the Santa Fe shadow on Tupac and I love it. So I'll probably be grabbing that Pennsylvania one. But I had a question on the cars, specifically about the tooling. I know that you guys have ran the congressional and the senator in the past. Are these the same tooling as those cars or different? - It's the same tooling as those cars. - Yep, the extruded aluminum body and then the same punch tooling for the window configurations and the blend and observation car. - Absolutely. - Awesome. - I gotta say, real quick, just, I do have a question here, one of my personal ones for these 18 inch cars. And also again, thank you guys for bringing back the 18 inch cars for someone like me who doesn't do 21 inch cars. This was so great to see in the catalog and I'm sure other people who love these cars can echo this sentiment. You guys have done so much when you start doing, the smooth sides of the high waffle last time. And now we've got the ribbed cars back too. This is really, really nice to see because these are great toolings. So first of all, thank you just for bringing those back. My one question for him was the couple, since you guys have worked with the 21 inch cars now, are you guys planning on doing some sort of like semi-kinomatic coupler on these? Because I remember in the old ones, they did kind of have a bit long of a coupler on the end or some kind of close coupling on these new ones. If not, it's completely fine. There's still, you know, amazing cars. But was there something in the works for that, with this new run or no? - Actually, yes, there is. Looking at the samples that have come into the high waffle cars a week or two ago. And we've got a little bit of a kinematic design in there. They look, they look and work pretty well. Oh, you just secured yourself a couple of orders there from me. That's fantastic to hear. Thank you. - Yeah, I have one last question on these passenger cars. So I have some of the old sets and this doesn't bug me, but I know if some people kind of don't like this. Are the windows going to be inserted from the outside in or from the inside out, if that makes sense? 'Cause the old cars from the early 2000s, that obviously they're individual window pieces of plastic that are inserted from the outside in and they kind of extrude from the car. It doesn't really bug me, but I know some people have wanted it to be on the inside. I didn't know if that was going to be a change or either way for me personally, I don't mind, but I saw some people asking about that. - They will still be the same way they were before with the windows on the outside. And that has to do with the way the cars are assembled. - Yeah. - They have to slide the interior in through the ends. And so having the windows on the inside makes it impossible to put the car together. - Yeah, it makes sense. - Or take it apart. - Yeah. - No. - Unfortunately, it's always one of my things that I didn't really like about the passenger cars either, myself, but yeah, there's just no easy way to change that without some very significant changes in how we would do things. - Looking to expand your collection? Check out Trains.com. - Trains is your go-to place for new and used model rarer products. They have everything ranging from engines, rolling stock, parts, track and scenery. If you need it, they probably have it. With new discounts being added daily, you'll be sure to find something you like. Plus, Trains offers a newsletter which keeps you up to date on new items, discounts and upcoming promotions. We've been using Trains for years and we highly recommend their Stellar service. What's really cool is you can also collect points by buying Trains and using them on future purchases. 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So, check out Trains.com and start expanding your collection today. - Yeah, no, I totally understand that 'cause obviously the 21 inch cars there, I assume they're inserted from the inside 'cause they're gonna flush. - Yes. - But no, that makes terrible sense that it's an assembly process related thing. - I'm really excited about these. I'm having a hard time deciding which ones to get. So, that's gonna be a tough process to narrow it down. But the BGG one's always one of my favorite fission line engines and so really happy to see it back. And I'm also excited just for a secondary reason which is that with the 125th anniversary coming up, I was like, well, they'll either do the GG one or the 700 of you, that would make sense. So now I've got the GG one and I'm like, okay, I'm holding out hope that maybe the 700 of you will come back in 2025, got my favorite comes and we'll see but we're really excited about that. - One catalog at a time guys. (laughing) - I'm getting ahead of myself there but I thought I was really happy 'cause I was like, well now there's still hope. - I was just running my 763, the 5331 yesterday. Maybe I'll psych myself up, I don't know. - Wait, Eric, I thought there was a myth or something that if you talk about something then it appears in the catalog. Didn't we talk about that last time? - Well, that's right, yeah. Well now it's going to happen. - That'd be cool, but yeah, I think I might go with some alternative road names on this one though. I think I might get like rather than do it 'cause I already got, I did the PNC last time so I think I might, I did PNC name-trag last time so I think I might be like Penn Central in Conrail or something this time around, we'll see. - Get the American Railroad set. - Well, that do, it's like, geez, this is so hard. I gotta mirror this down to something reasonable or-- - So many options. - It's gonna be reasonable. - That's really good. One quick thing, just also, one last thing, if anybody has anything else on the GG1s, can we talk about how good the renders of these are? Oh my gosh, are they pretty? Like, you guys really did a good job on those GG1 renders. - They are really good. - Thank you. Well, it was a team effort on part of our creative team, of course, who just does a great job of taking things that don't exist and making them look good enough to want to buy. And then also, having the designs up front, Dave was able to use the actual 3D CAD files. One needs to get the renditions done. So, where there are some different detail variations and things like that, those are captured in the model. - Yeah, those advanced-- - Or in the individual area. - That would do. - All right, and to keep moving along here, anyone else else have anything on the GG1s or should we move ahead? - I think we're good. I think we're, these are sort of related to the GG1s 'cause they're kind of-- - Yeah, right. - They're kind of enhancing heritage with Pensey as the B60 baggage cars, both normal and vision. - Mm-hmm. - That's right. - Yeah, you gotta have some B60s if you're modeling the Pensey or really anywhere. These things travel all over the country as head-end cars. It's just looking at some Union Pacific shots out in Wyoming the other day. And sure enough, there's a B60 sitting in the yard. (laughing) - That's right. - But yeah, great cars, beautiful models, new numbers for some of the Pense games we've done before. Like obviously the main different Pensey Pensey variations and tried to come up with a couple of different variations on the Pense Central cars that we hadn't done in the past, including the maintenance of way yellow, which is pretty cool. You've got different door and roof configurations on these as well to get them right to the prototype. And then for the first time, we're adding in the vision electronics into these cars as well. So these will give you the loading and unloading sequences and the rail sounds as you're rolling along. Really a lot of fun. And like I said, you can put them on any train you want because these things travel all over the place. - I think it was the last catalog show when you mention the idea of some new electronics for your freight cars and station sales cars. Well, these have those or will these just have the older electronics that we've already seen before? - These will have very similar features to what you've seen before. We've still got some development in process on next rounds. Some of the smaller boards are done, but there's still some things that we are working on tweaking as we move ahead. - So stay tuned. I think a very catalog of the not too distant future is going to have some pretty cool things coming to show in it for sounds. - Exciting, that is super exciting. - Cool, the vision line, those will be, you can run those with the legacy remote, right? - Yes. - Cool, I got in a couple of the cabooses not too long ago, and those are really fun. So some of these are kind of the same thing. - Yes, same functions just now, finally, in the Pensian Vive Car Body. - Sweet, awesome. - All righty, and then next up, we have got probably one of my favorite toolings from you guys as far as modern stuff, the SD70 ACE and the SD70M-2. These are always popular. - Yeah, we seem to find a lot of excuses around these models. (laughing) - Yep, now hold on to new features on these to talk about, I suppose. We have upgraded the tooling, this will actually be actually upgraded for the last round of these, but it wasn't featured in the catalog to add the new, isolated, well, not the new, but to add the correct isolated cab tooling onto the NS Heritage units, so that they'll have the right lines on the nose and the cab, so that'll be included here on these as well, along with the rooftop details for the PTC antenna. Also new this time around. Of course, it's in the Vision GG1s, but I think it's worth noting that now we're getting into the rest of the legacy locomotives. Starting in this catalog, all of the locomotives will have the four digit addressing feature when you're using the cab three and the bass three to run your trains. So for folks like Eric who buy everything that's in the catalog and are running out of number slots or for people who, like me, just can't remember which of the two digits on the side of the cab they use for the road number, this is a nice advantage that you'll have going forward with all of the legacy product. - That's great to hear. - I noticed that, I don't know, have you ever done Super Bass units for the SD70s? 'Cause in past of those, the ES44s and various other modern diesels have a Super Bass option, but I don't notice them in this catalog. Is there a, I guess if you have done them in the past as a reason why they're not here or if you haven't done them, it makes sense. - I can't remember if we've done them in the past or not to be honest with you. I'm pretty sure that we have. The reason we didn't put them in here, I just, with the more folks on units, I went with a powered or just a non-powered option. There are a lot of people with a heritage engines who just like to have the paint schemes, but there are so many heritage engines out there that you don't always, you don't need all of them to be powered. So if you're just looking to fill up your wall or you have a personal favorite that's going to sit on your desk, then the non-powered to make it as inexpensive as we can for you is the way to go. And then with the others, the number of units out there on the road in the Ferromec scheme or the Suzy Q paint scheme are so small that it may essentially give you two powered units in this go-around. But certainly the super base program on modern diesels or glaucomas in general is not going away anytime soon. It is a really fun way to beef up the sounds on your layout for sure. - Have you guys have a question on a paint scheme? Have you guys done a Savannah and Atlanta paint scheme before? - It would have been done in 2012 as part of the initial offering of Norfolk Southern heritage units. I don't know that we've done it since then. - Yeah, 'cause I'm sure there's nobody on this podcast in Georgia related. - No, nobody at all. - I can tell you assuredly they did do it before, as it's sitting on a shelf downstairs. - Did they? - I don't remember. - I can confirm that 'cause I've seen it and maybe have tried to walk off with it. (both laughing) But I do have a question on these 'cause we are getting the Savannah and Atlanta, but so I don't have to steal Eric's. His, when his came out, the men curve was 054 and now it says 036. - They should still be an 054 curve, I believe. You can probably cheat that a little on these. The ES44s are a little less tolerant than the SD70s from what I recall. A lot of it really depends on what you have coupled behind it. By themselves, these should do an 036 without any difficulty. If you put something really good and heavy behind it, you might get away with it, or if it has the articulated couplers on it and some heavy weight, you might be okay. If you're putting like 6464 boxcars behind it, yeah, that's not gonna work on an 036 curve for sure. A lot of it just depends on what you have behind there 'cause it's the coupler swing more than the turning radius of the trucks themselves in this case that gives you the issues. These are also really big engines to try and put on another 036 curve and have them look halfway decent. But I would say probably if you look like an 048 or something like that, you probably wouldn't see too many issues. - Awesome. - Yeah, I can speak from personal experience. I had these a couple of these and they ran fine on 036, like you said, Ryan, it really depends on, all you need is a really good buffer car there as the second car and you can get away with it. - Yeah, they're pretty nice. I got a couple of them, they're really cool. Got a couple of questions from the discord on this one. The first is what the Fermex have a Spanish cab chatter. - I saw that question come through. It hasn't been fully decided yet, so I'm not going to say for sure that it will. But it's something that we have talked about maybe putting in there and seeing if we can make that happen. It would probably be one on the, not where all the crew talk is in Spanish, but on the seven key, putting something on there might be a fun way to do it. - Cool. And then-- - Let's see here. - Oh, what else do we have? - We're asking about recording the K5, L-L-L-L-L-A horn and if there are plans to upgrade this to kinematic pilots. - No plans on changing the pilots just yet right now. As far as the horn recordings, I always saw some questions like on SD-45s and about engine recordings and things like that as well. We're planning a few trips over the next year to go out and get some more sound recordings. If I can get a good recording with Tracy of these different horns, then definitely we will do so and add it in. But I won't promise any new sounds on these without them in the bag right now. - Cool. As a quick aside, I believe it was the Union Pacific SD-70 and the Amtrak F40, the horn on that is so good. They're not in this catalog, but those are so good, that file, fantastic stuff. - That's actually a perfect-- - Many new sounds are always good. - Oh, I'm sorry to say, go ahead. - As I said, I think it's actually it's the perfect time to bring up something that you mentioned last episode is people providing feedback and also input to the company for models. 'Cause obviously providing feedback via your guys's email or some form of feedback, you mentioned the support email last time helps with models after the fact. But in theory, if a model is still in like before full production goes, you can send in ideas for sounds and maybe details and things like that could get changed in time for them to be on the final product, correct? - Yes, very much correct. I think probably a good third of the emails I get for the first two weeks after a catalog comes out are from people saying, this really should be like this, or have you seen this? And that's very helpful, especially when you can provide also some photographs or links or places to help correct things that you see that might be off. Doesn't mean that we can always correct what's wrong, but if there's something that we can correct that doesn't require major changes to the tooling or a deco that just can't be reduced to miniature or sounds that we just don't have access to or IP we don't have the rights to, then definitely we try and make those changes when we can. And the closer to a release date that you can get us that information or flag those things for us, the easier that is. And it's one of the advantages of our build to order programming and sales method with the higher end equipment is that we haven't already committed to a purchase order number on these. And so there is a little bit of time. We have about usually four or five weeks that the dealers have to collect those orders. They're also putting in their custom run orders right now and that's keeping our creative team extra busy, of course. But if there are things that you notice in art that jumps out at you as not correct, feel free to drop us a line. The best way is through our normal customer service channel. Talk to us at lionel.com or you can call in at 1-800-4 Lionel. But if you're sending me pictures and things like that to look at, then email is usually the best way. Talk to us at lionel.com is a direct link to the company and they forward those on to all of the project team, not just myself, but Megan, Corey. We all get those for our respective projects and look into things and we'll make the changes where and where we can. - That was an excellent time for another thing you said. - Yeah, that was just, I think that was probably one of the biggest takeaways for me from the last catalog episode was just the fact that it's not like you don't want the feedback. You want the feedback and there is the option for it. And so it's a lot of people probably don't know that. And I think it could be wrong. - There was, I think you guys posted on your social media somewhere made one of the deco samples for the new F-19 specifics. And I heard a whistle in there. I hadn't heard in quite a while. And several people I know emailed you guys and I don't know if that was just a sample having that or what, but if it does turn out that that model has that, I guess that's probably a great example of people email, you take the feedback and then it's produced in the final product. And that's just, it's a great thing. And I think people definitely should use it as much as they can. I assume that Matt or someone here will probably put the email and all that into the podcast notes or whatever. But no, that's just, I just thought I'd bring that up since that's probably one of the best things we've learned talking with you guys on the podcast. - I will certainly put that link in the show notes. - I do have one question before we move forward here. Just kind of an observation and correct me if I'm wrong, are all legacy engines in this catalog now have the, the four digit addressing, would that be correct? - Yes, yes, that is correct. - Okay, that's cool. All righty, so that was an excellent bunch of info there. Yes, and also I think one more thing to add onto that point, you made Sid and Ryan about the suggestions. If there is something from an older piece of equipment, it helps to have the product number handy. Isn't that right, Ryan? - Yes, absolutely. Because we've made things, we've made a lot of things and we've made them a lot of times. And so, we'll get things, hey, can you use the whistle that you used the last time you made, that you used in the challenger? - Sure. - Which challenger and when? And so, that helps us, if we have a SKU number, it helps us go back through the records that we do have and try and find it. Sometimes things, file names are not always what you'd expect them to be. Sometimes they're named by the engine that they were recorded from. Sometimes they're named by the type of whistle that was on the locomotive. Sometimes they're named just by the date that the recording was made and a brief note. And so, it's helpful if you know of a whistle that we've used in the past, there's a pretty good chance we still have the files. We just need to, a little bit of guidance in how to best get to that whistle. So, a SKU number is the best way to help us out there. - There you go, folks. Do a little help up front, do a little research and then that will help them get you the changes that you wanna see. Be the change you wanna see in the world, in the catalog. (laughs) So, speaking of new stuff here, we have got two truck sea liners. The, well, all sea liners have two trucks. I'm duh, four axle sea liners. - Yeah, this is the first hit with the four axle version of these. Since we acquired the MTH tooling and we've hit a bunch of great road names and paint schemes here, these will all be available in two A units, both powered, both the same except for the road number. And then if you wanna B unit, those come as the super bass units, which have the super bass sounds and the smoke and legacy control, no motors on these, but they have the extra sound baffles and so forth inside for that great bassy sound. So you could do an ABA or you can put them together in any combination you like. These tended to get mixed and matched a lot with other power on these railroads after a little while. So it wasn't uncommon to see these paired with other things. So not having to buy an AA set, if you don't, if you only want one unit, it's kind of a nice change of pace. - Yeah, it's really nice that you guys are offering these units a single, you know, it's mixed and matched 'cause, you know, back when you hit each other, you kind of had to buy them as a set at least of a two unit. So the fact that you can do this comboing is, you know, people just put aside, you know, everybody's got opinions on what manufacturer does things really well. But I gotta say, I think you guys, in terms of die casting and everything, I think you guys pretty much offer the best when it comes to specificity and, you know, customizing for each different road name, I don't really think anybody else does it better than you guys in mass production of plastic and die cast. I think I'm pretty safe in saying that. What do you think guys? - I agree so. - Absolutely. - Oh yeah. - For sure. - I had a question on these, of my own. I know in the last catalog, when you did the e units, you offered a separate fixed pilot. Are these going to have that or not quite yet? - I don't have that plan for these just yet. - Yeah, a lot of that's because we're going to be moving these toolings around a bit. And so still getting a little more familiar with this tooling and how that might be workable. The PAs, we will do that with, but the C liners right now are still not a fixed pilot ready, at least from the factory network. I think with a little bit of modeling skills, you could probably figure out how to do it. I don't think it could be that difficult on these for somebody who was really adventurous. But we don't have plans with that on these just yet. - Is the general idea that any like PA, FA, e unit, F unit kind of deal, any of those diesels is the idea that most of those at some point down the road will have the option for the fixed pilot? - It's something that we're definitely going to work towards. Yes, that's very cool to hear. - Any time we can improve upon the toolings is always good. And so apparently we've got some new stuff with these, these great new PAs, we've got another run of these gorgeous suckers. - Yeah, some popular road names, some paint schemes, that again, we haven't done in a really long time if we've ever done them, and so I'd like to do some different paint variations. The Santa Fe didn't have too many paint variations on these because they didn't need to. It just looks really nice in that war bonnet scheme. So we went with it, figured it was good for another round. There were always always a big seller. So people are always happy to see that one back again. But I think this may be the first time we've done the dark green paint scheme for the New Haven on these, which actually has become one of my more favorite New Haven schemes. It's highly underrated compared to McGinnis and some of the other brighter paint schemes they've done. - That is a correct opinion, sir. - I love them. They're really nice orange Brooks, at some point, maybe. - What was that? - Orange Brooks paint scheme at some point, maybe? - That'd be really cool. - Yeah, I was pouring between those two paint schemes on this one for this round. - I could, you know, we could put New Haven PAs in every catalog for like four years and not hit all the paint schemes. (laughing) - It's very true. - Yeah, sweet. - Awesome. - They look as good as the one, the sea liners you guys did last time, those will come out looking really nice. - That's a New Haven fan, thank you. - Yeah, it was really pop. - That's catalog. - Oh, yeah. - That was a pretty-- - We had some questions. - We had some questions. - Yeah, Johnny, this is your wheelhouse with the SP in Texas and New Orleans, go for it. - Well, SP is my wheelhouse. Texas and New Orleans is not my wheelhouse, but I also ask some of our Texas community members have asked in the catalog, the SPAs are a number four pool in the Texas, New Orleans, Alamo. They, prototypically they should have three digit numbers to be TNO locomotives. Would that be some of you guys would consider for these models or are they gonna retain their SP numbers? - That's something I can definitely look into. I saw that in the question, shoot me some more details on that and we can make that work. Would it be better to change the train order numbers or change the road numbers? - Probably being kind of nice for the folks from Texas to have the train number, the actual road number be edited. Since the last time I think it did TPA's was the Shasta daylight. So giving them some love would probably be a very much appreciated. - All righty. - Yeah, they were super excited in the Discord talking about those, just the other night and Texas and New Orleans people, they love that road. So getting some more obscure stuff is always good. - Yeah, they're pretty cool. And then on the Santa phase, and I guess the nickel plates too while we're at it, is there any chance to do stainless plating on those? Are they just gonna kind of be like a silver paint? - We'll do the, on the Santa Fe, we'll do the simulated stainless paint like we've done in the past. It's not plated, but it does give a more metallic look to it. And then the nickel plate, theirs were actually painted white in this paint scheme. So that's what we'll use there on the PAs. The passenger cars will be that same simulated stainless steel color so that they'll tie in nicely with the 777 Burke from the last catalog. We had got a ton of requests for matching passenger cars to go with that engine. So I figured this was a good opportunity to pair them with a PA and give people two options to pull them. - Sweet, cool. - I'm really excited about these 'cause I already had the nickel plate road PA set from years ago, the last time you guys did it, but I never had any passenger cars to go with it. So I'm really excited about adding these and running them together. That's gonna be a lot of fun. - And it is worth noting on these PAs too that we're, it pains me to do it, but we're cutting the nose up and putting that bell in the nose like they did in later years here. So for nickel plate modelers who like that, really unique detail, here's your shot. - What is that? - Well, that's awesome. - Bell, yeah, in later years, and there's probably a reason for it. I'm not sure what it is. I'm not enough of a nickel plate of file to know. We'd love to be enlightened. - Nickel plate of the bell. - They move the bell up into the nose and they cut out a portion below the left front number board and stuck the bells in the nose or not every unit, but quite a number of them got this. And so we're modifying the front end tooling here to allow that detail to pop in there as well. - Oh, wow, I didn't even notice that. That's really cool. - Yeah, that's a very cool detail. I didn't expect any manufacturer to be able to model that. So it's a kudos to you guys, very impressive. - So this is how Lionel gets you. They're like, okay, I've already got the nickel plate road PA set from a few years back. I'm okay. And then they do, they add some new detail and you're like, darn it. Well, now I got to get that one. (laughing) - And these have had some vicious cycle. - These nickel plate passenger cars are all aluminum. - No, these are the 21 inch plastic cars. I think the features got mixed up on the spread here, but these are the 20 inch. - Yeah, 'cause aluminum body construction. These will be plastic. - Okay, all right. It does say they have figures inside of them. Is that correct? - That is also not correct. These will be plastic not the others. - All right, just want to confirm? - That's good. - No, happy to get those out there. - Yep. - And for all listeners, guys, come on. This is your chance to own our logo. This is our engine right here. This is your chance to own the Mincha Models podcast locomotive. So, come on, there's a sale right there. Get on it, folks. - It sounds like we need a custom run. - Hey, we have our prototype one already. Maybe we should do an official one at some point. (laughing) - That's right. - Now, these are gonna be super popular, as always. The road diesels you guys have been doing, the E6's and now the PA's. This is really exciting. And ooh, we get the Halloween ones. Oh my gosh, where are our experts? - There's tons of those on these. Of course, Megan helped me out a lot here with these to make sure that these turned out nicely. And we've got the Halloween Express, the Midnight Flyer with our Doom cars and then the PA's to go along with. I've had a few people ask me questions if we would have more cars or more power coming along this line down the road. And I said, there's probably a pretty good chance you'll see a steam engine or some other diesels. If the PA is not your favorite, or if you're looking to add more cars to different things, there's definitely would be some options down the road. But I think these will be a very cool passenger train with the purple LED lighting, the little spirit orbs silhouettes in the windows and just some fun names on the car sides too. It's a little tongue-in-cheek, but it gets you to your final destination in style. (laughing) - I was just gonna ask, you answered my question, I was gonna ask, which was, are there figures in the passenger cars for this one? 'Cause when we were at train a blues of this past weekend, there was a passenger set that had like ghosts and like vampires and stuff inside of it that I thought was super cool. - Who's train was that, Peachy? I can't remember. - That was Steve's train. - Okay, did he do that himself? Was that a custom thing? - No, I think it came that way. - That was really cool. - Mm-hmm. - The nice thing about the 21-inch cars, as opposed to the aluminum cars, is you can open these up very easily. It's four screws in the corners of the cars, the shell comes right off, and you can detail the interiors of these to your heart's content. Since we were going for more of like the ethereal theme on this, we populated it with the little ghostly orbs in the windows, as opposed to putting figures in. We thought that might be a little more appropriate, but you can certainly knock yourself out and put ghosts and goblins and demons and whatever you choose to inside these cars and have a lot of fun with it. - That's really cool. I had stayed away from the Halloween stuff and now Lisa opened that door, so she's got the triplex. And now she says she was thinking of not getting the J3A. So we've opened the can of worms on the Halloween stuff now. - You're welcome for that, by the way. (laughing) No, I think these passenger cars are gonna be really cool. I like that they have kind of the orb thingy in them, so that's awesome. Speaking of the J3, it's probably a good time to bring Meghan in for a little bit and let her talk about her J3. Can't have a Halloween section and not get Meghan involved. Or be criminal. - Okay, I was chomped at the bit there to talk Halloween for a minute. Really excited to bring a Halloween theme to the Lime Master Hudson. And how could I not feel Ryan's really cool features that he's done on other items and make this one glow in the dark? So for the first time on a LCT.0 locomotive, we have a glow in the dark Halloween locomotive. - Now, this was a point that was brought up this weekend as well. You need a black light to get it to glow, correct? - I believe that these can be activated by charging them up with a flashlight or an LED. It will hold better with a black light, but can be charged up with regular lights. - Oh, awesome. - I had a question about the J3 ahead. Okay, so it's a Lion Chief, but it's Lion Chief. I mean, sorry, Lion's, what is it? - It's a Lion Master locomotive. - It's Lion Master. - It kind of packs all the details that you would like on like a legacy locomotive, but packed into the smaller traditional size so that it has the ability to run tighter curves and on smaller layouts. - Yeah, I know some of the Lion Master stuff that's been really popular, so is this gonna be more detailed than your average LC2 steam locomotive? - Correct. - Okay. - I will say a D, this set is absolutely fantastic. All the clever little jokes are very much appreciated. I don't know if you guys have done this in the past or not, if not, maybe it's a potential punny name, but I was really expecting this one to be called the Screamliner, but maybe that can be reserved for future training. - Oh my God, that's all, I love that. - There really isn't a shortage of puns for Halloween. There's so many great ideas, especially, you know, Ryan going with the Doomliner on all these cars and having a Vista Doom car, that's really fun. So I expect that there's going to be lots more to come. - Vista Doom is a very clever, I like that a lot. - I mean, Megan is great at her puns with her different things. I'm a huge fan of what she does. So I, I know that- - I like to take credit for all of that. I mean, some of them I've come up with, some of them the creative team has come up with. You know, Ryan's come up with some great ones. It's really fun to like collaborate with everyone on the team here. And I think we're always trying to like one up each other with the fun Halloween stuff, because it's so much fun to take like stuff from the real world and try and make it spooky. And I think we've been doing a really good job at coming up with some really fun stuff for the Halloween items. - Yeah, no, I definitely agree. You guys are brilliant with it. It makes it very hard for my wallet. Let me tell you. - I'm sorry and thank you. - I'm still laughing about Doomliner. (laughs) Oh my God. I love it, I love it. Now this is, and the fact that you guys are still coming up with like different schemes and everything for the Halloween too is a testament to how passionate you guys are about this stuff. It's such a, it works so well. You would like, you would think Halloween trends, but like it's so, it's so nice. It really, it really does a good job. - I appreciate that. I think I joined the department back in like 2018, 2019. And one of the things we talked about was like, how do we expand and do different things? And obviously everyone has their different passions. For me, it was Halloween and the fact that it's grown as much as it had and that everyone's really resonating with it and that every category now has really touched it is really exciting for me. And I love that everyone has enjoyed it. - Oh yeah, I think, and everybody who was at Pulitzer come back, didn't we see a train of almost every car that had ever been made in traditional scale at the three railers? - Yeah, are you talking about like Saturday night? - Yeah, I think it was almost every single car. - Yeah, he had, that was Steve. He had the passenger set and then he had all of the freight cars too. It was insane. - Yeah, it was a huge train. I'll pull by one, one cheap 2.0 Burke. I think it was handling like what, it had to be at least 30 cars, 20, 30 cars. - At least, yeah. - I do have a question on the tank. Do those frogs float in there or are they like kind of stickers on the inside? - They are actually decoed in there. So what's really cool about that tank is that it is the first time that we're doing like a double walled on the 8K tank car. So it'll actually have like a liquid interior and then the frog will be decaled inside of it. - That's really awesome. I think that one is really cool. That's on my list of must haves. - Yeah, now these are all absolutely fantastic. And then moving ahead, we have got some more great small switchers, 'cause these things, you can, again, like, you know, you can put an infinitesimal number of schemes on these, the SW1s. - Yeah, great to do some more roads on here, some really fun paint schemes. You know, like to throw in a few of the normal classic all the time roads, but then mix in a few oddballs that we don't do every catalog in here as well. And SW1s are a great excuse for that because they ran on so many railroads, but also, you know, industrial lines and switching areas and private companies. And they're still going strong. So pick a paint scheme and you can find it on an SW1 somewhere. - I love that Kargill one. That's a great scheme. Anything industrial, like, there's so many different industries you guys can do on these sorts of engines that are so, you know, kind of bombastic, you know? Like, whoa! - It's funny, I've suffered. Everybody that I've talked to on this SW1 is talking about that Kargill, everybody likes that one. That's going to be the most popular, popular one. Including me. - It's just a neat scheme. And also, thank you for choosing, I don't know if this was accidental or on purpose, but thank you for choosing specifically the Amtrak engine for the Washington DC terminal. Like, I don't know who's the secret DC lover there, but y'all have been given us some love lately. Thank you. - Not a problem. That one's actually interesting. You know, it, the interesting little tidbit on that that I found while I was doing some digging on it, 'cause they have a few SW1s. This was, I think the only one so far in this paint scheme, but they, when it went down to Washington terminal, it started off in Wilmington as the shop switcher there. And in Wilmington, it has a nice brass bell and a gold painted GG one horn on the cab roof. And then when it went down to Washington, they took the GG one horn and the brass bell off and swapped it out for something a little bit that were more abscondable. So yeah, I thought that was kind of a neat thing. It was probably someone's pet horn and pet project in Wilmington. And then when he found out his baby was going, his toys went home before they were lost. I thought that was kind of cute. I've had a number of friends over the years who I've known have worked in the Wilmington shop. So I thought that found that one kind of funny. - That is great. - And that was the model I have a GG one horn, right? - Yeah. - Yeah. (laughing) - Awesome. - That's a good idea. Oh, and then we got the SD40-2s. Again, another, like, you know, again, you could put it in like every single scheme. I think there was some interesting new customization on these two ones. Don't we have some questions on this one there, Madsy? - Yeah, all of them actually relate to the CNW one. Quick guys asking about the bell. And if those detail parts will be available separately to customize the previous release. - That's a great question. I'm sure when I sit down with Aaron in the parts department to order parts, that's something we can look at as a custom thing that they can order to have on hand. But yeah, that's a, the bell is a new tooling modification for this, as is the low headlight option for the Suzy Q variation. I don't think we've done a low headlight before. So here and there, where we can add some of these things, you know, that gong bell on the Chicago Northwestern is such a distinctive piece that to not put it in there seemed kind of unfortunate to me. So let's go ahead and do it. If we can put a bell in the nose of an Alco PA, we can do it on an SD40 dash two. And so we're gonna, gonna add that there. They only had the two units in the Falcon service paint scheme. I like this. So that's why we chose the numbers we did and this paint scheme. But in the future, we'll probably go back and do some of the other options as well. - And on the same vein about talking about songs asking about the, having a bell sound for that? - Yes. We will have a bell sound for that. I've got some, some videos from when the streamliners were in town a few years ago down here. Sweet. - Yes, indeed. That is fantastic. And I think you kind of already, we also had some prime mover questions, but I think you guys already addressed that that you would be doing some future, some future work. That's, I think that handles that question there. But now these, these are really good. You guys have been given a lot of good Midwestern wealth. That seems like for some of the more modern diesels. And I think people are really appreciating that. - Want to support your favorite O-scale podcast and rock some awesome merch? Well, now you can. We've teamed up with redbubble.com and have come up with a great selection of gear that you can get right now. They have everything from shirts, hoodies, stickers, mugs, bags, you name it. Heck, you could even get a wall clock with us on it. All this great stuff and more at redbubble.com. Links are down on the show notes. So grab yourself some gear and rock some awesome podcast merch. - No good, we try and mix it up a little bit. I did have to ask, what is that one next to the subsequent hammer? Was it the VmV? - The VmV? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, that one. - A Paducah-built rebuild and one off paint scheme. Sort of like a demonstrator or lease unit. So it doesn't matter where you model, you could put this one out there. It's a fun paint scheme and a one of a kind. And when I saw it I said, well, that looks like something people would enjoy having on their layout. It's certainly a tension getting. So we threw that one in the catalog. - Cool, that's a neat one. - Yeah, it is a really cool, really cool color. - Love it. And then steam. And, oh my God, what a great engine to start off with. And nobody we know here loves an NW. - Hmm, no, what's an NW, any idea? - No, no idea. - These look fantastic. Selkirk fronts on a couple of them. I don't think that's ever been done before. - I love how we keep calling it that, even though it's probably not called that. - Hey, educate me, what's a Selkirk front? - Ryan's probably better than I am to educate people on that. - Yeah, right. - That's a new name for me, I hadn't heard that term. But I think we're, soon we're talking about the, the smaller smoke box door there. - It looks very similar to a New York Central style boiler front. - It was done due to the, I'm gonna botch what they put inside there, but I was just looking again through the research on there today to make sure we were getting some of the things right on this. But it was done to the way the smoke box had to be arranged around, I want to say part of the super heater, but I know I'm wrong. But I've got a book 10 feet behind me that would correct me. And so the initial, of course, the initial run of these from 2170 to 2194 had this, this front for a while. And then starting about 1951, they, they rearranged things and started converting them over again. So there's some other details on here as well that, that would be changed with this front on them. So I want to look and see if there's other things we can do to help make the model a little bit closer to prototype. But it's a neat, it doesn't need little detail there, but I thought, why not? Let's see if we can do it there and add something to the model. - That gives you more of an excuse to buy more of them folks. - Yeah, something I was wanting to ask is, remember last episode I talked about the idea of what it takes to get something made, like what does it take to get a detail part like that change? Because people are always asking for very road specific things and it's just, I'm just kind of curious on like what you have to go through in order for something like even this, which is a detachable part to be changed, let alone, you know, something that's built into the shell. - The short answer to that is that it all depends on the detail part and the model. It can vary greatly. In this case, it's not too terrible because as you mentioned, it's a detachable smoke box front. So it's its own little piece. It's less intensive than having to modify the entire die cast boiler tool to change something. If we're making other changes in the process, it also helps because you sort of get an economy of scale thing going on. So it can vary a lost wax detail part. Some of them are only a few hundred dollars. When you start getting into die cast tooling changes, then the numbers start turning into four digit numbers and going up pretty quickly. But it all depends. There's no single set rate. Sometimes you think something's going to be pretty inexpensive and it turns out to be quite an ordeal just because of the way the project's been tooled. And sometimes you think it's going to be a no way we could do this and factory comes back and says, sure, we can do it for 600 bucks. Why did we do that 10 years ago? So it all depends. There's always surprises. But we do it where we can. And if it's an opportunity to do something that hasn't been done before, an opportunity where we think it will make a significant difference in sales to people, then it's something that we definitely look into putting the effort into doing. There are some things that are just looking at the economies of it, what it would cost to do versus the payoff in the model isn't always there. The same type of things. The same decisions we all make on a more personal note when we do our own model railroads, right? There's things that we'll spend a lot of time on and try and get just right. And then there's times when you go, you know, I could spend another six hours on this to make sure that every rock in this cut is just like the one on the prototype, or I could crinkle up some tin foil, press it into the plaster, and no one will know the difference. So that's probably a really bad example to use in the line of work I'm doing, but I think you get the idea from a cost benefit analysis. Yeah. You know, a better example might be, you know, looking at things like drive wheel spacing and diameter. Obviously, we try and stay as true to prototype as we can, but if you wanted to be a real stickler for that, these trains would never stay on the average O scale person's track or go around a curve, right? So you make some compromises here and there where you have to for the model to be functional and be what people want it to be versus 100% down to the, down to the centimeter scale reproduction of the prototype. I really like all of these, but unfortunately I'm not going to order one of the single units I'm holding out for what's later in the catalog. Likewise. And I think we all know what I'm talking about. Oh, yes. Yes. Yeah, this is great to see this engine coming back. And then I think we've got what might be the most talked about steam engine or one of them out of these two in the catalog, the mountain, the return of a USRE mountain. And my God, what a great, great bunch of offerings with tons of road specific stuff. We got Vandy tenders. We got different headlight positions, paint schemes. I am obsessed with the fact that you guys are doing an R1A and R1B for New Haven. Thank you so much. I will be, it was hard not to order both of those. Yeah. Now let's hear about the mountains a little bit. Great engine. One that we don't do fairly often and has struggled a bit, but in some of the past issues. But just so many great road name content options. These are not necessarily all exact USRE prototypes. But where we can, again, coming off that last conversation where we can make a few simple modifications to get us a little bit closer where we have the tooling. Yeah. Why not? Let's try and capture some of these different railroads and some great paint schemes in here as well. So I hope these are as popular with the dealers and so forth as they are in the comments section for sure. Yeah, these are really nice. The biggest question that I have on these is the New Haven one. We'll have a coal or an oil tender. I think we have these called out as coal. But again, if I need to do an oil or something like that, let me know. Coal is correct. And then the ones that have number boards, specifically the Santa Fe and the Alaska, will they light up? If I can make them light up, we will. It depends on, because there's a smoke unit right underneath there. So I'll have to double check. I don't want to promise on either of those on the spot. Okay. Cool. And then the ones with the brass tender, which tender is that? Is that the Mercado tender? Yes. That's the tender off of the Mercado. Cool. Not exact for the two mountains, but pretty reasonably close and certainly closer than the coal-fired tender would have been. So it definitely will have that look in the right and the six actual trucks and so forth. I'm really excited about these. That Texas-in-Pacific looks really cool. I don't know how true it is to the prototype or whatever, but I think it looks awesome. There was a locomotive painted like that. A mountain painted in that paint scheme. I've got a guy working with right now to help me make sure we get the color styled in right. We've gone back and forth on a few of the points. There aren't a ton of color photos of it. There's a few good drawings of it. And there's some things that we've debated over like the color of the number plate on the headlight and things like that. Was it black? Was it red? Certain things in some photos look blue. Look at the next photo. You swear they're black. You know, fun stuff like that. But I think we've got it pretty well dialed in here. And it is definitely based on the prototypical steam locomotive number and all of that. I think that looks really cool. And I'm excited about that southern one. So yeah. Yeah, I'm also excited about that southern one. Hoping Eric gets it so I can run it on his layout. Now I need you guys to get the green right because that's important on southern getting that the shade of green, the right color. Oh, yes. That is very important. But how does that work? Like just as a side question, like how do you guys, you know, like when it comes to doing like colors on locomotive and making sure you've got the right color or like, does the factory say any samples or do you just give them a, a pantone color or whatever and say, just do that one or, or, you know, what kind of a vetting process is there for the, to make sure the colors are right. So the way the process works, we, we start by trying to match from whatever source that we can to get a good pink code match to it. Usually with a Pantone chip is our preferred way of our preferred color matching system to use as a standard. If we can get to a prototype and take, you know, Pantone chips and hold them up next to the real, real thing, we've definitely done that in the past. Ironically, those are usually some of the most contentious ones I get heard, I hear about, that we were nowhere close on the color. But if we, we failing that, we will look at color drift cards, photographs, you know, whatever we can find out there that, that gets us to it. Always happy for help on colors. Again, here's one of those areas where suggestions are great, suggestions that have some sort of sample with them, to back them up are 10 times better. Once we get something that we think is right, we put that in the art for the factory. They will then produce a colored chip and send colored chips over to us for everything. At the very least, we'll get that chip on a piece of plastic or metal. Sometimes they will put it on a chunk of the actual body of the model, which can be very helpful. The look of a color on a flat piece of plastic compared to a round boiler can vary greatly. Even on a flat piece of plastic, you know, holding it horizontally, holding it vertically, putting it in different lights, you can get several different shades of green out of the same green. It just depends on how you're looking at it. We'll get those samples and we'll compare them again to our records or our samples that we have and chips that we have in the office and try and improve them against that constant. And then that's what the factory should produce on the model when we see them in the final production. Very cool. Once we have a color that we think is pretty good and locked in, we have a ledger that we keep of what those approved colors are. In some cases, there is no Pantone color that matches. There is no red in the Pantone book that matches a Santa Fe red. So we have Lionel Santa Fe red as a color that we use. And we have factory chips that we've made up for that color and to keep them here. The factories have a matching chip so we can keep those straight. But where possible we try and find something that's a standard color to at least a starting point. I thought that was kind of cool when we did from doing the custom runs of learning that Lionel has their own like standard cut like there's Lionel standard silver. And there's all these just Lionel standard colors that you can use that are not any particular color name or just called Lionel standard silver, Lionel standard black whatever. It's kind of cool. And then I just one more question from the discord on the separate sale mountains was asking about the Texas Pacific. We'll have a smaller boiler door diameter like the previous New Haven seaboard in St. Louis ones. Or is that just a printing error? That's probably a print error on the art on these. Unlike the the GG ones and somebody else, I don't have the final design files that they wasn't able to render, render this direct straight from the design. So we had to do a little bit of photoshopping and tweaking. So some things may be slightly out of whack on the on the mountains. I don't think we have two different smoke box fronts tooled up for these. I just got to say before we move on here. I was talking about Midwestern left for the diesels. The southern love, not just southern railway, but just the amount of like slightly more obscure. I mean, I know I've got several friends who do seaboard. In fact, we're seeing some Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis T&P again in Tennessee central. I mean, this is great that you guys are giving some more, you know, south eastern and mid southern love because these are some really, really good offerings. Yeah, no peachy is happy about that. Oh, yeah. I'm definitely not complaining, but again, my wallet might be. I think they were thinking about peachy on some of these things that we're going to come to eventually, but that's just my fear. Those are fantastic. And then, um, engine, I'm super happy to see back the heavy mic. I think this is is this only the second run you guys have done of this tooling or is this the third? This is the third. We did two pretty quickly back to back when we first told this up back about 2014-ish. I think 2014 catalog was the first time this one showed up. And we did the 2014 and I think maybe again 2015, something like that. But it's been, it's been out of the catalog for a little while. We went real hot and heavy on mics for a few years and then backed off of them for a bit. So yeah, this is the second time arounders. I think Great Northern was a road name we did once before and a paint scheme we did once before. Some of these other ones we've done the road names, but before I could, I tried to do a little bit of a paint variation on them. And then I'm pretty sure this is the first time we've done the Sue line or the EJME on these heavy mics. These also will have a revised gearbox in these as well. It's one of the things that Dave has been working on. We had to make some modifications to the chassis, but we're redoing the gearbox in these locomotives also. Oh, there we go. That was a big, that was a big question we had was the gearbox. So that's great to hear. Yeah. People lost their minds over that 1003, the Sue line. Oh my gosh. That got such a reaction. As a mid-westerner, I think, I think it's on the same level as excitement as people had for when 1630 was announced. So a lot of people are hoping for a very similar level of attention to detail type of model as the Russian tech compods in terms of accuracy. So I'm very curious to see how those turn out. So you can see there we've got some plans in place for the details to move the headlight, move the bell and the dynamo. And then I know there were questions on the sounds. I had people reach out to us directly to see if there would be possible to get actual sound recordings. If someone has some contacts up there that can help make that possible and I can get Tracy up to Minnesota. Might be able to make that happen. But until I have the sounds in the bag, I won't promise that we'll get that. If we can't get out there and record the actual one, we will, at least in the case like this, we do know there are lots of recordings of this, lots of videos of the locomotive. So we'll look and see what we have in our current files that we can tune a little bit and try and get as close as possible when some of the whistles for this engine. Awesome, awesome. One of the questions asking about flag number boards and the color of the number plate. Line number boards and the color of the number plate. Yeah, they're asking about adding flag number boards to the headlight and the color of the number plate on the headlight. Will it be a dark gold? If it should be a dark gold, you know, again, these are great things. Shoot me some photos, shoot me some notes. The headlight may end up being a new brass casting one way or the other, so might as well make it right. And then likewise on the number board, if it's supposed to be a gold or white or whatnot, let me know. I do the best I can, but I certainly can miss stuff. And we can know a lot about a lot of things, but knowing everything about everything is a tall task. So we'll try and send me photos of what you want to look like on that headlight and we'll see what we can do. Appreciate it. And just the personal one for me on the Pittsburgh and Lake here. Did they ever have those that were green boiler or were they all black? As far as I know, they were all black. Okay. Cool. Yeah, green boiler, that's more, even though you get the A2, I think that's more of a B&A thing. But yeah, those are excellent looking. Again, lots of cool variations to roads. You got the EJNE, but I think it's like the World War I era with the US government stampings on that. That's all really, really neat for diversity. Yeah, they got a handful of those as part of the allocation and they didn't keep them very long. I have not seen too many photos, so I don't think they ever wore any sort of other full EJNE paint. If they did, I haven't seen a photograph of it. So this seems the most likely, historically accurate paint scheme for the EJNE on the USRA mics. That's good to see that era getting some love. And then we've got, my gosh, we got the fantastic O6O. I have one of these personally. It is one of my best engines. It's with Sid right now. I'm sure he can attest he enjoys it quite well. These are great engines. Yeah, fun little engine loads of detail on this little thing too. So really, really neat locomotive. And every railroad needs a couple of good yard goats. And which one piece you're getting? Hmm, some mystery. I'm very excited for the Atlantic coastline. And I was discussing this, and I think I know the answer to this, but this does not have whistle steam just because of the size of the engine. Correct. Okay. And it's got a tether too, right? Yes, it has the tether. We will be upgrading this to a locking tether. This go around, like we put on the Russians. Oh, it's going to be the locking one? Yes. Okay, cool. I really like that locking one on the Russians. That really stays in place well. Yeah. And then these will have the drop plate too, which I don't think shows up in the catalog art. Oh, I didn't know. But yeah, so we have got that in there. And then the tether is twofold. And we had to put some of the electronics in the tender because the thing is just so small. And two, it's an O6O, right? You're using this in yards with switches and switch frogs. You want as much pick up as you can get. And so having the tether pick up on the tender, like we do with all of our switch engines, it just helps with performance overall versus trying to do it through the IR. Yeah, exactly. I think on these small ones, that tether makes a world of difference. And I'm okay with that. And I like how you guys always, if it's too small for the whistle steam, you at least throw in the swinging bell. So there's something, there's something cool there. And swinging bell is one of my all time favorite features anyway. So I'm always okay with that. Yeah, I'm super excited. It's going to be my first engine with the swinging bell. So swinging bell is probably, I'm with you, Eric, like that's probably my favorite feature. So tell me like, give me a choice of whether I went in whistle steam or swinging bell, swinging bell would win like every time. Yeah, I just think it's so cool. It's so cool. The most enjoyable part of it is when people who don't are not in the hobby, when they come to see the layout and they see that bell swinging, they're like, how does it do that? A little bell swinging. You know, that always gets a ton of attention. Whenever I've run mine, everybody is like, oh my God, the bell. It's moving. And also just with the tether, some, you know, it looks good to it. I mean, it looks somewhat realistic. It looks like airlines or something. So now those are excellent models. We got the sets, two amazing sets kind of following the trajectory you guys have been doing lately with offering a huge, you know, talking point set and then a really good road specific set with some good detail features. So let's hear about the sets. Looking for something different? Need a gift for a fellow railfan? Well, folks, look no further. NPL Customs is your source for all railroading decor. Handcrafted made in the USA and veteran owned. Their products made for rail fans by rail fans. I personally have a set of coasters from them that I absolutely love. Find them on Etsy at NPL Customs and use code MM Podcast at checkout to save 10%. NPL Customs, quality since 2017. Yeah, like you said, you know, the last few catalogs, we've done these big sets and people love them. The sales have been better than we expected them to be. As big sets go, the one in this catalog certainly is long. But this one's not quite as loaded with vision-level cars and so forth. So it's a little bit more of an economical big set. I guess if you could say that when you're throwing a big articulated steam engine and 13 cars in there. But yes, we've got the Y6B, 12 of the three-day hoppers. And these will have the new plastic coal loads installed in those. And then the caboose there for the end, the two-window caboose. Not a perfect N&W prototype caboose, but for the tooling dollars, that one would take a reasonably close past the split test caboose from these, best I could do for this set at least. Certainly wanted to offer a big coal train. There then will be seven more separate sale hoppers. Further back in the catalog, if 12 just isn't enough. And of course we've done plenty of N&W hoppers over the years, us and every other upscale manufacturer out there. So put 60 hopper cars behind your Y6B and go have fun. It's the way it should be. And then for the New Haven fans, again, we've got the mountain and then some nice colorful short freight contest to put behind there with the box car or the AC2. You've got to do a state of main car if you're doing a New Haven set. It's like the law. And then the New Haven N5 caboose there. So really neat colorful set. Again, nice start and you can always add more to it to have a longer contest or run it like this. Just a nice pretty train. I was actually showing your not to keep hogging the New Haven love, but I'm going to keep doing it. I was actually showing your New Haven tool and do a few hardcore New Haven guys who work on real steam and they were really impressed. They said that's a good engine. And I've got to say that, an NW King Cole set. From what I've heard, that is the real star of the cattle. I mean, vision line aside, that's the star of the cattle log just because it's a kick ass big set. And then you've got, you know, it's actually a pretty good deal. You know, for a thousand extra bucks to get 12 hoppers in a caboose. So everybody's been talking about that set. From what I've heard. The name alone is great. King Cole. Like, that's fantastic. Now you guys got to do a really cool box for that set. You can't call it King Cole without doing a cool box. [laughter] Note it. Note it. We'll make sure we do something awesome on there. They said... Oh, please step to it. I guess I'll never know. My house wasn't working. What? Said, so I went with the King Cole set. You got to buy this. And you got to go along with your 60 Cole hopper. You got to buy five Y6B's, right? Yeah. So I have to buy every single one of the cattle log. Each one. That's it. Yes sir. No getting out of it. Two pulling, two pushing, and one in the middle. What a throwing sight that must have been. Yep. I wonder. You got to have one running backwards at the rear too. Just, you know, very ended. Yeah. [laughter] John, if you want to cover the questions for this, just the mountainset. Yeah, sure thing. So for the minute man set, we've got some very specific... Why did you choose me to talk about these? Oh my God. [laughter] No, it's super specific. You haven't stuff. So the catalog image there is a Delta trailing truck, which is correct instead of the regular USRA, the more like the leaf spring one that you guys have used. Is that what you guys are actually going to put on that engine? Is that actually the correct render? Yes. We will put the Delta trailing truck on that. Sweet. Okay. And then the feedwater heater is that the same one that you guys used on the regular R1 mountain that was kind of flashy. He had the stars on the cylinders was a little bit brighter. Is that the same part you guys are using or a different one? It's probably the same part we used for the rendition. Again, it's possible that we'll get something new cast or that, or maybe that same part, depending on what the factory can use to put on there. Gotcha. Fantastic. There was a question about the air gap between it. Oh, actually where the feedwater heater is sitting. I'm guessing that's probably a no that you can't really sink it in because that is a die cast towing, but am I wrong on that or is that where it sits? Well, again, it depends on the casting itself. If you have to make a new casting and I can make it that it's concave on the bottom so it would fit down a little bit closer, then we can do that just until I have the design in hand and see the casting master on that. I won't swear to it. The artist rendition is probably pretty close, but we might be able to get a little bit better. Gotcha. I think it looks good as is. I mean, even if that's all that comes out, that'll be good. And then the last one on that was the state of main boxcar. Is that a standard O tooling with the plug door? Or is that just what you guys had on hand for the artwork? So is that actually a standard O plug door boxcar? It is the standard O plug door box, yes. Nice. And I think this is the one that has the plug door on there. Yeah. Wait. And that's also the new Haven version and not the bank version. So I don't think that one gets done as much. So that's also another reason to buy the set, folks. And then if you want that car, you have to buy the set together. Pretty much. Yeah. And the exclusive engine number two. That's true. And then the real quick, the caboose, that's not going to be a visual line caboose. Or is it? No, that's just a straight caboose. Cool. All righty. And do we have any stuff on the King Cole set for questions? Or was that everything? No, that's all I have. That's actually all the questions I have on the Discords. Oh, fantastic. Now we can just do all our own stuff. We have some more pens you call them, what? Cabin cars. Yeah, we got some N5s. I'm always bad with that. N5s. Yep. Great ones there. The war bonds. Penzy gets in the Long Island love. Long Island's been getting a lot of love lately. It's been getting a lot of sales lately, too. So that certainly helps us a lot more. Oh, yeah. The passenger N5 is beautiful. I love that car. I know the previous run, the graphics were a little bit different. I was kind of expecting this, but that's a nice car still. None of us. I'll probably grab that beautiful car. Good to see PRSL love, too. Lots of really good dedicated fans of that. They'll love. Got some Penzy prototype box cars here. I think this is a pretty accurate tooling dependency, isn't it? Yeah, the X31 tooling is pretty good. It's some of our new tooling by any means, but newer tooling is compared to some of the other projects that we've done. And two road numbers each in a variety of prototypical paint schemes. The merchandise service is a bit of a stretch. They never applied that paint scheme to that style of car, but it's one of their better looking paint schemes and figured why not? Oh, yeah. Looks good. Who cares? And then, oh, yeah. Lots of good stuff on these pages. We've got the rocket booster, the flat cars. No, I don't think they are the rocket booster tooling. Yes, yes, they are. That's excellent. Although, without the rest of the rocket there, I mean, these things could be casks of whatever you want them to be or part of a turbine load or, you know, you go ahead, you figure out what it is. Yeah, I think it's really cool how you've kind of reuse that. And actually the AC one, I think that'll go nicely with the AC set that's coming out. Yes, it should. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. And then actually that container with the radioactive sign, I mean, that doesn't look too far off from like the real casks that they use the transport nuclear waste. Oh, yeah. It's not, I mean, they usually don't think they usually sit on their side, but it's not too far off. I mean, it could pass for like a nuclear waste transport car or something. I know it's a nuclear waste car, but could you put a beer label on the side of it? We've been talking about that. Yes, we have, we have four more good ideas for, for what kinds of cans we can, we can put on these flat cars. That'd be so cool. Oh, you know those will sell. Yeah, those, those tankers are great. They're so versatile. Again, it looks like you're using the new, what's called double, double wall tooling. It's advantage. Yeah, the new double wall tooling for the AC car, that set was one of the standouts from the last catalog in terms of comments and then also backed up with within orders. And people made it pretty clear they wanted more than just the three cars that came in the set. So, yeah, here's a couple, this will look really right at home in there with that fuel load inside and fits in there perfectly. That's just, that's an iconic Lionel brand too. And then, yeah, more hotbox reefers. This is going to be a cool car. I was just playing with the sample test code last week in the engineering room and it's a lot of fun. I think people really going to enjoy this. A nice upgrade over the earlier version of the car. The TMCC days. And now you don't have to spend $400 on a Golden Gate Depot refer to get that fantastic REA scheme. There you go. Yeah, it's not the, it's not the correct body style for that paint scheme, but such a good looking paint scheme. And we figured if we put some of these in the express reefers, then you could have some fun on your passenger trains too. If you wanted to have a hotbox there or run them in a freight contest, it's your railroad do as you, as you see fit. But the great Northern ACL and REA paint schemes were really nice head end cars and just wanted to add them into the lineup. Yes, we appreciate the ACL. I've never had a hot box, hot box reefer and I don't really know anything about them. So obviously I'm going to get the ACL because it's ACL. But can you tell me like what I can expect from that? Sure. So if you've, if you've had any of our vision reefers in the past, it'll have a lot of the same features as that. You, as it's rolling along, you get the clickety-clack sounds and whatnot. And then you have loading and unloading and icing sequences in the car. So you have the same things there that you have on the vision line cars when you stop it. You can run through the different sequences of the car being loaded or iced or being emptied out. And then there's also with this one, the hot box feature, which you can activate when the car is rolling along. And when you press, when you activate the feature, it will start with some dialogue. You'll hear anybody smell that, hear that noise. And the longer you go, the louder the squeaking, more consistent the squeaking of the journal will get. After a little while, then you'll start to see a red light flicker. It's set above the truck, so it looks like the truck is starting to glow. And then the smoke unit kicks on and you'll start to get smoke drifting up from the end of the box car there. And the sounds get louder and the dialogue picks up. And this all continues until, you know, you stop the train. And then they put out the fire and cool the journal and then you go back on your merry way. So you can stop it early in the sequence before it gets too crazy and keep on rolling. Or you can let it go all the way until the thing is smoking and squealing down the track with the hot box. It's a fun little feature that's user controlled so you can play it as often as you like on the layout. It won't just randomly continue to do that to you over and over again either. So you can control how many times you have to deal with it. That's really cool. I'm really excited for this now. I was excited already, but I am super excited now. It's a fun piece for sure. That's very cool. It's awesome to hear that you guys not only made it its own unique thing in terms of the hot box feature, but the fact that it also has all the standard features from the existing reefers allows you to seamlessly blend it into your train and have all the extra functionality. I really appreciate that. Yeah, I didn't realize that those had all the regular reefer features as well. That's, I mean, that's like getting two cars in one practically. That's fantastic. Love it. I mean, it's a good rolling stock offerings. We've got some TFCs. These are always popular with people you can literally build an infinitesimal train of these and almost never run out of schemes to put on these cars. Yeah, we keep coming up with new ones every year. So it's a lot of fun. Those are fantastic. We've got the return of a classic we haven't seen in a long time in through L.O. the Milwaukee Ribside box car. Yes, this is the old Weaver tooling. We never had a chance to run it early on in the lion scale line, but we're finally bringing them back here. I know there's some pent up demand for these cars in the market. Whether you're a Milwaukee fan or not, having a couple of these in your yard just breaks up the look of all those PS1 and other box cars, just something a little bit different and they really do jump out in the train. So all prototypical paint schemes here and two road numbers each. The spent grain cars there do have the hatches on the roof, which is a neat little car also. The ride of the electrified olympian. I love that one. I know John when you showed me that one. I think it was like last year or something. I always thought it was really cool. I'm like, yeah, it's a beautiful car. So that was really fun. Milwaukee stuff is just so cool. And then we got the AC cars, the hoppers. I think this is also a new one for you guys with the sort of because you guys have done these short hoppers before, but this one has the sort of peak in the middle with the two separate bins. Is that correct? Yeah, this has the open side panel between the two inner slope sheets for the hopper, which I always thought was neat. Just gave it a little bit of a different look over your PS2, your normal PS2 car, but similar in size. And again, some fun paint schemes. We really did hit the ACL guys pretty hard in this catalog. I was going to say it's like there's another one. I am not complaining. It's fantastic. If you want to keep rolling with that into the next catalogs, you will not hear any complaints from me. I love that. Yeah, you're single-handedly bringing back the ACL market. It's great. And then we got more continuing because I think you guys started this last time sort of doing the the weathered, the super weathered hoppers with some of those some of those smaller hoppers, the Winchester and Western and some of the other ones with the graffiti. Yes, we're really doing it now. Yeah, we had we had those on the the PS2s and we've seen some early deco samples of those and they they look really awesome. I think people are going to be happy and once you once you get a few of them on your railroad, you're going to want want more of these things. So, you know, the graffiti has been really popular over the last several years. So we're just sort of taking it to the next step and adding some of nature's own art to the side of these cars. And we didn't didn't show both sides of all the cars here just on the sake of space on the page, but obviously each side of the cars has its own graffiti, its own rust streaks and so forth. And I think they're going to be really cool looking cars. Yeah, I'm excited about these. I think they're kind of a great family lines one reminds me of being a kid because growing up here in Georgia, we would see family lines stuff a lot. And so I'm really excited about that. I think one observation I had the price point on these are actually really good because if you go out and have something if you don't want to do it yourself, you have somebody like custom, you know, do a graffiti or a rust on your cars. And that that can get really expensive. So I think I think this is a good price point for people who want this kind of like graffiti, like, weathered car and that those rust streaks look awesome on these. Yeah. And the effect is really convincing. There's, of course, if you really, really love doing this kind of weathering work, this is your starting point and you can still still take it to the next level and add more and go crazy. But if you've, if you've got weather phobia and you've never tried it or don't want to give it, you don't want to ruin the, ruin the model. Hey, this, this gets you a good way there and you've got a nice looking car that doesn't look like it just came right out of the box on your layout. Yep, good point. Yeah, we got some more hoppers to go with our excellent coal engines, a bunch of different eras too we got some, some modern CSX stuff we got, you know, Alaska, lots, some good Alaska love that's a, that's a popular road name you get a lot of. But I'm Alaska lovers and then some fantastic be you know. Yeah, a couple different different paint schemes on these he's all have that, that peaked in there on the end of the end of the cars, all of them available in seven total road numbers so two three packs, and then a single car, depending on if you just, you know, want one or you want a whole train of them. You've got some options here, the separate sale cars that you're seeing here these do not come with the loads, but the new loads are available separately if you want to get them and add them to any of these separate sale cars or the earlier lion scale cars that we've done or the old weaver tooling cars. All of the, the weaver lion scale, now Lionel, two bay three bay and four bay hoppers have the same footprint so whether it's an offset side or has the exterior posts, the interior dimensions of those cars are all the same so these will fit regardless of the body style these will fit in any of those cars. They're not going to fit necessarily in like the lion L GL GL a hoppers or the some of the older H 43 style 100 ton hoppers three bay hoppers, those those loads, those would need their own loads, but the older weaver tooling cars any of those, these will drop right in and be a nice, nice added for you if you don't want to make a whole ton of coal loads on your own. That's good to know. That's really good info so those will fit in most all the, that's fantastic. And then we got the Pennsylvania one. Sorry. No, no, no, I was just, I was literally just going to go on to that topic. That's such a great choice for a card deco scheme it's so unique. Yeah, so the pencil long term least a bunch of Norfolk and Western H two hoppers. And that's, that's what this paint scheme is based off of the model is not exact for that. That's type of car but it's the closest thing for the closest pencil hopper that matches, you know, to this style of tooling for sure so that's where we went and that's why you see the the darker black patches there where they painted out the N and W lettering. But a lot of the small print other things stayed the same stayed in the same font. So neat cars on the pencil for sure. Very cool pieces. Sorry, John. No, no, please go ahead. Would, would those cars pencil long term lease them. Yes, but did they ever wonder their way back in the N and W. Oh, sure. And that pencil scheme. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. They did. And they interchange as well. They, they were not in captive unit train service or anything like that to the best of my recollection. So you can mix them up and shuffle them about or send them back down to the N and W. They did all sorts of fun things like that. No kidding. So I mean, in theory, you could buy the King Cole said in all those add on cars in the pen season. They have a super long culture. You certainly could. There you go. Honestly. All right. And I think that's all the scale stuff. We're on a traditional now. It's a great bunch of stuff. And right out of the gate, we got the, we discussed a little bit before, but the line master J3A. During this week's topic, you can join in on the conversation to on a community discord server. We have a lot of different discussion channels ranging from showing off your collection, discussing the latest and greatest in the industry, a buying cell form, and even a voice channel. You can hop on call and talk trains with us late into the night. We're a little over 300 strong and we'll love to have you join us to check out the invite link to our community discord down in the show notes. Read and knowledge the rules and introduce yourself and start chatting. We have a great team of moderators who make sure all are welcome to end respected. So what are you waiting for? Come on down and join us in on the fun and let's talk some trains. Yeah, it was time to bring this going back. We haven't done it in quite a long time. Again, the line masters afford the ability to have that higher level of detail and locomotives versus, you know, some of the other lc two locomotives. And what's really great about these is either the higher detail you still get to run it on your tighter curves or smaller layout, but pack full of features like the lc 2.0 locomotives are the ability to run it with multiple operating systems, whether it be, you know, conventional or with the new cap three app or the universal remote, a lot of options there. But again, a lot of detail for a good value price. Yeah, what you were told about. So, so good. With the New York Central line master Hudson and then some fantasy schemes there. I think right now that the favorite might be the pacemaker scheme, but the line align scheme I think is really classy as well. Yeah, you guys picked some real good ones. You've been paying attention to which of your fantasy schemes do well because this reflects those offerings. This is, this is good stuff to see. This is excellent. And so we're going to see him obviously line master was always kind of like the, you know, the top tier for traditional scale. So I'm sure these are going to look really, really good for a lot of people who want something a little bit more out of their traditional scale stuff. Yeah, always fun to bring back a fan favorite with new features. Excellent. What else we got here gets more of the excellent almost scale sized GP 38 and some really good looking schemes. Yeah, I really love doing diesel locomotives because we're able to pick some really fun paint scheme. Ryan actually brought the CSX CPKC collaboration to us with the being their first hydrogen power logo. It was unveiled in about April of 2024. It was a really fun one to do. Again, it's got their really unique paint team on it. We have Canadian Pacific, the Ohio central, which if any time I get a chance to do diesel locomotive if Ryan says I can I throw an Ohio locomotive in it. So it has the Ohio central with the operation life favorite branding on it. And then the Purdue family bill and the seaborn system. These look really good. I, that CSX is definitely probably going to be one of the best sellers out of the catalog there. That's just such a neat locomotive. You guys got that out pretty quickly too. I think they just did that engine pretty recently. Yeah, it was a no brainer. We definitely had to do this team. It's very unique. Yeah, those look fantastic. All right, so what else we got and then we got, I think your first ever CPKC product, maybe the first CPKC thing in any O scale form at all. Yeah, this is really cool because the employees of CPKC, you know, when the merger was completed actually voted on the state scheme. So being able to honor them in that way and come out with their their first team. You know, we've been watching and looking at all the photos as it came out and trying to make it as accurate as we possibly could, while also honoring, you know, Kansas City Southern and Canadian Pacific with their own separate trailers on there. This is a really fun one to do. And I think a lot of people are going to be happy with this set. Yeah, that's a really, really good choice for that, especially with all the publicity to that just happened with the, the merger going down. So that, that one should do really well. Those, those diesel modern sets are always great sellers. Yeah, they're fun. And I always like the removable trailers, the ability to mix and match stuff. Really good set and really great colors on it. Fantastic. What else we got in here? Oh, yeah. Oh, more area 51. That is another one of your guys best sellers. Yeah, this is a scheme that kind of hits here over year over year. What's fun about the area 51 stuff is that we really try to make sure that colors and logos and these always mix and match back with stuff that we've done in the past. The US well recovery set, I think is a really fun one because it's not a lot of play value with it. You have the transport car. It's got the backlit green LED lighting with the aliens being carried inside. Yes, of the dare car with the manually operating boom, and the boost that has the searchlight on it that will rotate as the local mode of goes down the track. We wanted to make sure we had some several pieces as well. So we have the area 51 helicopter flat car add on and the maxi stack, again, kind it together with previous sets that we've done. But also really making it feel like a fun set that, you know, UFO comes down and crashes around the rails and this trade tech can come and recover it. Yeah, now this stuff is always super super popular and then you got even more stuff some scale stuff with the hot box refer that's fantastic with the kind of Roswelly New Mexico paint scheme on there. This is just, this is just really smart use the tooling right here. Yeah, we have a lot of fun with it with the tank car accident that utilizes the AK tank. It made sense for Ryan and I both to kind of throw some items in there utilizing that that same tank car but then putting a different road number on it. So you'll see it on the accident with the new tooling for an alien sculpt inside of it. So we'll have that liquid in there which we've never done before. And then a huge alien figure in there. And then the light on the tank car accident will be like glowing green to simulate like a spill and new figures have also been going to be told for this. And then we'll sell those separate sale as well. Again, some fun scale pieces to we couldn't resist. Ryan had to throw in a hot box refer and the heavy duty flat car. Again, both really cool unique features on those pieces being able to have the glow in the dark with area 51 just makes sense. These are these are really, really good pieces. I love that you guys are doing the smart marketing synergy here coming up with Beetlejuice good Halloween slash film crossover here. Beetlejuice is one of my favorite Halloween movies of all time. So I really need everyone to rally and purchases so that these can be made because I think they're going to be awesome and we've had a lot of fun recently doing the lighted box cars. With the Beetlejuice sign it's got like that backlit illumination kind of adds a little bit of depth to the side of the car. I think it's going to turn out really, really cool. The movie comes out in September. We have the box car here that celebrates the original movie with the stills from the original movie so it kind of hits like the key highlights from that movie. So obviously you have to show the model town that they've got there the handle for the recently deceased can say it's show time. Could be really fun. I love them. I think they're in the great color scheme and I think it's going to match really well with all the other Halloween stuff that we do. That was impressive. I had to get side to get something in there. Yeah, I absolutely love Beetlejuice and talk about perfect timing with the sequel coming out so. Yeah, I'm really excited about these and I hope everyone else is too. Are they making a Beetlejuice sequel. Yeah, yes they are. Interesting. I'm telling you. Oh, I said I was going to do it once I was going to do it. I thought he was going to say the juice is loose for a second. Is Michael going to be in the sequel? Yeah, he's Beetlejuice. Wow. Okay. That's part no aging makeup needed. Oh, man. And then we got some more American history cars. We got St. Louis. What else we got here. Sounds like good stuff. Yeah, we, we started this series a couple years ago, and we knew it was going to be successful, but I think it's exceeded our expectations. The opportunity to just celebrate really historic moments and figures and anniversaries in American history but specifically connected to railroad history, our connection, you know, as the brand. And so we have two new anniversary speech of here and also a really special tribute. The anniversary is the 150th anniversary of the eats bridge, which was actually a combined road and railway bridge completed in 1874. So it's designed by James Buchanan eats who was actually an engineer who built gunboats for the Union in the Civil War, which is really interesting. But the bridge itself was really an engineering feat and a marvel of its day because it was the largest bridge and first steel bridge of its time. And it's still in use today. You get a great view of the famous gateway arch from the bridge. And I just think that this is really going to be a home run for Freddie want of course local to that area as well. And then we have the Denver South Park and Pacific Railroad 150th anniversary since first operation. And so this was a historic three foot narrow gauge railroad that operated in Colorado back in the 19th century so it's served Colorado's mining industry. And it features some really amazing scenic routes. A lot of tourists actually can still visit some of the restored stations and track segments today. And just to comment on these two anniversary cars, as you can see in the East Bridge we've added that sort of arch detail to the car, just for some added effect. And we also like to put some interesting facts, historical relevant facts to to the bottom of the car there. I'm just kind of added touch of detail. And then the last but not least probably my favorite is a tribute to Roxie the long island railroad dog. And for those who aren't familiar way back in 1901, a young lady boards the long island railroad train she's heading towards Roslyn she hands her puppy, tear your pitbull mix name Roxie to a railroad employee. But due to the really unfortunate mix up or fortunate in this case, Roxie ends up separating from the railroad employee. And for the next 13 years Roxie travels the rails, where he has all kinds of adventures and meets new friends. And Roxie also enjoyed plenty of privileges, including a lifetime railroad pass at Long Island Railroad. He had the best seat on the train, even a seafood dinner served him weekly which I think is amazing. He had a $300 bank account at the Corn Exchange Bank to cover any bills he may, he may need. And when Roxie ended up passing away, not only did he make New York State headlines in 1914, but he received the proper memorial and burial that a lot of people still visit today and leave flowers. A really special car here and hopefully one that'll resonate with, you know, train lovers and enthusiasts and even historic buffs. I have never heard that story and I absolutely love that that is fantastic. Anything to do with animals and stuff is just that's, you know, it's going to be a winner. You just got me right in the feels. Oh my goodness. That is so sweet. Oh my God. And also, another fantastic Long Island piece too. Yeah, absolutely. I think this is going to resonate with Long Island railroad fans, probably the most. And also another great thing about these cars if anybody who has owned one these things always because these are part of the main USA series right these, these have a really good like texture and sheen to them for anyone who's owned these I don't know what it is but like no other cars you do have this it's really, really nice when you get one of these in your hands. Yeah, our team here in North Carolina, they do a great job, the attention to detail and the quality assurance processes of the highest standard. So I think that's one of the reasons why our customers are able to enjoy the product so much. Yeah, those are those are great choices this time around. And again, like you guys I always say I learned so much history just from these catalogs and from you guys as a company of stuff I didn't know before so. It's always nice learning these new things. And get some excellent cabooses here some new addition to the, the cafe caboose idea which is really great I think I literally went to something that looked exactly like that in a little North Carolinian town. So that might come home with me. That's really good. There are plenty of these that have been around the country that people have purchased and repurposed for all kinds of different businesses. So we took a lot of inspiration from that. I've seen there's one close to us that's like a hamburger shop. That looks really cool. And what's fun about the these accessories is that you get that decking kit with it. It's so easy to put together you can stain it you can paint it. I didn't even put it together without any glue and it stood perfectly fine. They did a great job designing it. So it's fun because not only can you park it on the siding, you could decide to, you know, move it and have it run on the layout as well. Yeah, it's a really good case of getting the double dip with a model there that's that would look great just like on a little for anyone who's got like a tourist railroad or just want something different that's a really good piece. Yeah, it's fun and I think you'll probably see more of these in years to come. We got some stuff going on the base three which is shipping out right now I think certainly see these trickle into the market. Yeah, I got to go pick mine up it's over at legacy station. So cool. Yeah, these should be there on their way to dealers. And you have a long long awaited and hopefully y'all are getting them soon anxious to see people's reactions and as you're picking these up or before you pick them up, the app is already available online. You can download it already. You can go to your Microsoft or Apple place door app store and download type in Lionel cab three, and it should take you right to it download that you can play with the Bluetooth side already without the base three, but you can start to get used to the functions and so forth. And then highly, highly, highly can't overstated enough recommend that you go and check out control.linl.com for your instruction manuals and how to's and videos from Dave and everything you need to know to get started and enjoy using your base three as soon as you get it home. But the hook up couldn't be easier and so far the reactions I've heard of all them really positive. I do have one quick question. Is the base three something you guys are going to continue to make. So that's all that's always available, you know, because like, I know with the old legacy steps, you know, he stopped making them after a while and then they became incredibly hard to find. You guys playing on doing like, you know, making it so that's always available. Yes, this is the command control platform for us for the foreseeable future. And we actually increased the order, the first order that we put in for these initially had already sold out by the time we were getting into production. So we added an additional order of units and another container showed up a couple of days ago at the office. So we have more in stock already. Some of our dealers have already gone through their initial allocation, but we still have a good supply of these on hand to get us through the next couple of years at least we think. But this is product unlike the base to and the cab to this is a product that we can support and will continue to keep in production and hope to have it as a never green product in the line. I can't say it will never be out of stock because we don't know how that works in the world, but the plan, of course, is like track. This is something you'll be able to get a hold of. Right. Cool. So what you're saying is I shouldn't hold out for the base for. Yes, I think that for for as much enjoyment as you will get out of the base three over the next couple of years and decades, it is money well spent. Gotcha. Thank you. It doesn't matter what scale you're in model operators are all the same when it comes to power and control systems. We can never have enough locomotives. But to spend a few hundred dollars on the control system that makes us able to use all of our locomotives is like, Oh, do I really need another transformer? Do I really need a cab? Do I need a. But yes, definitely, definitely invest in this. It is. It should be the last control system you ever need to buy. That's great. Like everybody knows, like, you guys definitely did your homework on this and like, took your time. So this is going to be a good product. Well, I know we're, we are as excited as all of you to see it finally out into the market. That is for sure. I think a couple of questions that I won't steal is thunder. Yeah, my question was more so just if you had heard it had any feedback on the base 30 or the the app yet or if it's still just bad early that you haven't heard anything. Things are starting to come in. And one of the things I would encourage everybody to do, like all new apps, there are bound to be a few glitches here there depending on the phone or device that you're using and so forth. So if you do come across anything that seems to be out of the ordinary, feel free to send us an email or give us a call. Again, talk to us at lionl.com or 1-800-4-LionL. And we set up the call center with a tracker sheet for any any bugs that might be encountered. So far, we really haven't found too many. There have been a few, but nothing, nothing too crazy. And we can get this fixed. One of the nice things about this sort of format is we can push updates very easily. You don't need black modules or anything like that to update the base or update your cab as new things come available, whether it's an update or just new features as we continue to grow and add more things into it. Our first sort of rollout with this was a couple of weeks ago out at the LCCA convention in Omaha. And we set up the base three on one of the modular layouts out there and invited people to download the app to their phone if they hadn't yet and try it for the first time. And a lot of the people we were working with out there had never run a train with anything other than a conventional transformer, or maybe a cab one, a few of them a cab too. And a lot really took to it a lot quicker than they thought they would and enjoyed it. So we have multiple people connecting through the base to the same locomotives and so forth and got to see how it would play in that sort of an environment with folks. People seem to really enjoy it. So I think as we get more of these out there over the next couple of days and weeks you'll see a lot more things popping up for sure as people get a chance to go and pick theirs up. Hook up couldn't be easier and you'll be up and running very quickly. But yeah, definitely check out the control.lino.com. That's where you will find all of the instruction manuals. And Dave Olson will be doing a live stream. I believe it is August 8 coming up in the not too distant future, depending on when this airs. I hope you're doing a live base three stream with our friends at Train World. And then also will be continuing to do is demos with Dave updates on a regular basis as these get out there in the market and he has more. Good things to show and talk about. So like I said, we did get ours yesterday. The one thing that we've noticed is we have to manually add in all of our engines. Is that normal? Do you know? I think there is a way to import that. If you have them on your if you have one an existing legacy system, I'm pretty sure there is a way to import that into the base three. Again, check out the control.lino.com and see if there's a section there on that. I can also probably look it up as we're talking here, but that will be really exciting for all of your podcast listeners to go through. But definitely check that out because I'm pretty sure there is a way to transfer that data over. I just haven't done it myself personally yet. And the best thing with any anything like this is to get it in your hands and play with it. That's how you'll really learn what to do and what it can do and how it all works. Perfect. That sounds good. Thank you. All right. I think we're coming to the end of the catalog there. Did anybody else have anything else we should touch on before we close up here? Any last minute things you want to discuss or just anything you want to touch on Ryan or Megan or Corey or anybody else? Just a few last parting thoughts from me. Thank you as always everybody for coming on and funneling us questions and letting us talk about what we do and the fun we have at Lionel. Really, really enjoy it. Really appreciate that. We've got a few more weeks yet open in the order window. Dealers will probably start closing their orders around the middle of August, depending on whether or not they have to go to a distributor and then get the numbers to us and so forth. So we've still got a couple of weeks ahead of us as I'm looking at the calendar now. So whittle down your wish lists and get ready and then get ready for some more fun announcements later this year and into 2025 as we get ready for turning 125 years young and having a great time with things in the year ahead. We've got a lot of fun stuff in store and we're all really excited at Lionel to be part of a company like this at a time like this when we've got a lot to be thankful for, a lot to be proud of, and a lot to look forward to. So thank you all for having us on and everybody stay safe and cool out there this summer and we look forward to seeing you sometime soon. Ah, that's a fantastic close their run that's yes everybody start getting your orders in it is going to be cool I can't wait to see what you guys are going to be doing for the anniversary that's really, really exciting. So yeah, so I think we're going to wrap this up here now. So we obviously have an amazing community and we'd like to take a moment to shout out some of our fantastic people who have boosted our server and help keep the lights on here at the ministry models podcast so we can do all these wonderful wonderful shows. We've got SDIV Tim Tim's trains blue comet fan 833 Maddie C trains new 1969 Commodore ghost ninja the rambles hard work pays off dashing dance trains, every day's life and SD 70 train fan we appreciate you guys so much it is you who inspires keep the show going. And as we always say we make this show for all of you guys. Wow, that was a another fantastic catalog show. Our stop is coming up next and sadly we almost part ways for now, but if you would like to get all of more of us off the air, where can folks find you Brian where can folks find Lionel. We're ever quality trains are sold. We are on the web at lionel.com. We are on all the major social medias places just search under Lionel trains Lionel Lionel calm for customer service inquiries or any any other issues. Talk to us at lionel.com. You can also send product requests there. They will reach the three of us very quickly that way, or you can give us a call at 1-800 for Lionel and and stay up with all we've got to come. That is fantastic. Peachy, where can folks find you? Absolutely. So you can find me on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok at peaches trains. So just search peaches trains on those social media sites and you will find me. I love it. Fantastic. Mr. Eric Siegel. Where can folks find you? Just search for Eric's trains on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, whatever X, I guess I should say. It's all under Eric's trains and easy to find. Yes, indeed. People should know you by now. Let's see. And we got Mr. Sid. Where can folks find you? My good sir. You can find me on YouTube, Sid's trains. Just search that on YouTube on Instagram. I'm Sydney's trains. And then you can also see me messaging and talking with people on the podcast discord server under the same name as YouTube, Sid's trains. Yes. Indeed. Mr. Matt Rochford. Where can folks find you? Sir. All right. Well, first thing the first Ryan, Megan, Corey, Eric and Peachy. Thank you for taking the time out to come on to the podcast. We're really, really appreciated. I know we're all busy. So you take the time out to come on and talk with us. It's important and we really appreciate it. As for where you can find me, you can find me on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram as WC model railroad. Excellent. Excellent. Mr. Matt Z working folks find you. Oh, what Matt just said to all our guests, all our listeners. Thank you so much for listening to the show and Ryan and the line of folks. Peachy Eric, thank you for coming on. Always a fantastic time to talk with you guys and forget me. I'm getting over a cold, so I don't sound the way I know me would. But big thanks to all you guys for coming on. Really appreciate it. Great time tonight. For myself, you can find me on YouTube under Matt dash train lover 9943 Facebook, under the same name, Instagram, Matt's dot hobbies. And like since I'm the major models discord server, always a fun time there. I love it. And Mr Johnny working folks find you, sir. I must have fallen down the same rabbit hole as you guys because I'm going to also echo that sentiment as well. Thank you so much. All the great folks here tonight from the YouTube sphere and also from Lionel. It's you guys who make this hobby great and help promote the growth of this hobby for a long term future and, you know, just from the little kid who would read all the Lionel catalogs it's always a dream to be able to talk with the folks from Lionel directly so you guys all rock and thank you so much for joining us tonight. You can find me on YouTube at autumn as it's a UD am us. I would promise you normally that I'd be working in a video but I keep doing a gazillion other projects so I'll leave the empty promises to the politicians and we'll show you a bunch of other cool stuff on my Instagram that is autumn is underscore trains you can also find me at Facebook at the same name as well. Keep an eye on that space as a Sid and John will be coming out here to Chicago to hang out with us so if you want to see what crazy wacky shenanigans we get up to there. Keep an eye on our space and on our podcast Instagram as well. Last but not least you can find me on the miniature models podcast community discord server where I'm always there interacting with guys in the chat and making a fool of myself and also doing some voice calls where we get to answer some questions and have a good old time so come on down You can find me before I do I'm also going to echo the sentiment shared by all my wonderful co hosts. It's crazy and like so wonderful that you guys are we can even do this with you all like I it blows me away every time that we have such a great community where we can talk with you all. We have great friends you guys take time out of your busy schedule to come and talk with us. It's just wonderful and it's such a great you know it just says so much about the way you care about us as a community to come talk to so Meghan Ryan Corey thank you all so much for being here again. Thank you for being our friends here at the podcast and for coming on and just you know goofing off and foaming over this new catalog as we do. It's it just blows me away every time that we have such a great bunch of people here. And you can find me the miniature models podcast discord server as well with all my wonderful friends here. If you're not a member yet why not come join us and you can find me on instagram at retro maccato 96 I'm very active on there and also somewhat less active on YouTube at retro maccato. And you can also find the miniature models podcast on instagram at miniature models podcasts just look for that beautiful blue nickel plate road MMP alco knows on there it's a great place to get some exclusive content you can get nowhere else. But yeah that was that's pretty much everything for the night guys that was an amazing show. Thank you all so much for being here we really really appreciate it. Thank you much good night everybody. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
