Live Impression - Lionel 2025 V2 Catalog

Okay, greetings and salutations. I hope this is working. This is my first ever attempt at a live stream so I hope this thing is working the way it should. So Lionel introduced their new volume two of the 2025 catalog today. I have intentionally stayed away from looking at the catalog all day so that you can get the first impressions. Keep in mind this is live so on my normal videos you get the post-production where it gets rid of some of the noise. Legacy Super Chief set. Okay, set includes two. Oh, the F3A and F3B. I see. Okay, with all of the sounds and all of that. I mean it looks sharp. Oh wow, there we go. All new tooling on the passenger cars. Oh, and you can get an ABBA set. All righty, and I'm sure, wow, we are talking about probably 072, 031. Look, there we go. 054 on the passenger cars. Yeah, those are awfully long. Okay, and the price I'm sure is, oh, $600.549 for a pair of cars. And what do we have on the locomotives? Do we have prices? Do we have prices? Do we have prices? I don't see the prices on the F3s, but I'm sure it is quite, oh, there we go. Wow, so the whole set almost $5,000 for the entire set. Wow. Okay, yeah, prices are high, but whoa, I mean it's a beautiful set, but there's not a whole lot of folks that I know that who can plunk down $5,000 on a train set, but there we go. All right, so we've got F3 sets. We got the Santa Fe Freight. We got Lackawanna. We got Minneapolis and St. Louis and Atlantic Coastline. Interesting. Okay, what else do we have? Oh, New Haven. Give us our post-war feel. A Lionel Lines SD38. Two of them. Okay, two SD38s. That one reminds me of the EJ&E scheme. Okay, and these SD38s $699.99. Cool looking. $700. I don't know. Okay, so more F3s. Oh, and look at the winterization hatches on these Northern Pacifics. That's interesting. Again, $600 for, $600 for just the Super Base B unit. Wow. So the AA set is $1,299 just for your two locomotives. There we go, but it's a beautiful set. But again, you know, not a whole lot of folks I know who could plunk down that kind of change, but if you can, more power to you, and that's really nice stuff. All right, SD50s. Chicago Northwestern CSX. Oh, Hudson Bay Railway. Okay, we've got Union Pacific, Lake State, Kansas City Southern. All right, $699.99 on all of those. Oh, we've got more SD38s. Here we go. There's my EJ&E that I was looking at. Detroit, Toledo, and Ironton SD38. And, oh, McLeod River. Okay, and of course Conrail, but with a later white stripe, and Cargill. It's an interesting scheme. All right, Detroit assembly line set with the long box cars. Appropriate. And then the automobile frames. Okay, so what are we looking at here? The SD38. All the cars. Do we have a set price here somewhere? Oh, yes, there it is. $1,399.99. Okay. Excuse me. Yeah, another cool set. Wow, these cars. $140 really for the size of the cars. I would actually kind of expect it to be a little higher based on some other things, but yeah. Okay, cool cars. Also, Impenzey B&O. I love the cushion underframe scheme. Southern, Santa Fe, CNW. Okay, and then some, excuse me, then some classic colors. Okay, so these would be wrong for that type of box car. These schemes all come before it. So, fantasy schemes here. The UP Challenger, the B&O Sentinel, NYC Pacemaker, the Penzey Merchandise. Okay, so Extended Vision Cabooses. We got the C&O Safety Caboose. That's cool. Burlington and Delaware and Hudson. Yeah, okay. Cupboard Hoppers, two bays. These have been around for a while. Yeah, a little cheaper. $99.99. CSX, DTS, KD, Norfolk Southern, Northern Pacific. Yeah, I can see a list price of $100 for those. So, street value, those are probably going to be about, what, about $85 actually at the hobby shop. Yeah, for the scale detailed cars, I mean, they're really expensive compared to, say, the Menards versions, but these are more highly detailed. So, you do get what you pay for there. Okay, NW2s. Now, this is not your grandfather's. Well, I was going to be ready to say it's not your grandfather's NW2, but we do still have the slotted frame. We do still have, looks like, empty space underneath the fuel tank. We've got the handrails in the post-war style with the So, yeah, in a way, this is kind of the old post-war. $259.99, $260 with the Legacy. Okay, Lion Chief Plus, and we've got the Smoke. So, I can see that. I'm not going to pay $260 for one, but I could see that in the market, having a nice new NW2 with all of those features. I could see a list price of $260. Although, it's interesting that the Curve goes up to $031 instead of the $027 like the originals. Oh, hey, we have some people chatting over here. Wow, this, sorry, I've never done this before, so this is cool. Okay, looks just fine. Hi, the NW2 price is misprinted in the catalog. Okay, that would be interesting. All right, yeah, love to get one of those long box cars, PRR, but not $100. Yeah, I can see that. Okay, well, hi, folks out there. Cool. I think they did a Lion Chief NW2 a little bit ago. I think they did two a couple of years ago. So, interesting. Conrail SP. Oh, okay, so America 250. Now, this, I was in the last catalog, these old-time cars. It was like the Christmas stuff, I want to say, but we've got the 440, a little bobber caboose on there. Interesting. Okay, so the set is $459. That's, yeah, interesting. These things coming up to our 250th anniversary. Box car, is it fireworks? Yeah, fireworks, lights, and sounds for $159. That's not too bad. Oh, okay, there's a little cut out there. Okay, not too bad. $85 for the stock car. That seems a little on the high side to me, I would think. America 250 set. Okay, so we've got the short, the short GE. We've got the 027 version of the Autorack car. And, okay, so $439. So, yeah, 031 set. I never liked these. I mean, I liked the enclosed idea with these Autoracks, but they were just too short, you know, compared to the, but these enclosed ones were, you know, shorter than the open triple racks. So, but, you know, with all those, I like the open racks myself, so these don't mix well with me. But if this is, you know, the way that you went with the Autoracks, I guess they're all okay. But then comparing it to this, to the height of the HiQ box car, seems kind of weird. Okay, what do we have over here? Saving my money for the Commodore I ordered. There we go. The Southern NW-2, yeah, it looks sharp. There we go. Thank you. All right, thanks for the positive comments there. All right, moving along. Oh, okay, so we've got the 250 in the big box car. We've got the 440, new tooling on the passenger cars. The Founding Fathers, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin. What, no George Washington? Come on. What, no Washington? Come on. Or is that the engine? I don't know. Oh, there it is. Yeah, George Washington. Okay, that makes sense. Okay, so you got them, you got them there. Okay, I like the Frisco Caboose. This is based on the original Bicentennial Frisco Caboose. Looks very similar. I do like that. This is an interesting little scheme. I think I prefer this one, but, you know, I'm more of a 70s guy myself anyway, so not bad. Okay, notable American box cars. Oh, we got, we got Jimmy Carter. We got Rosalind Carter. Okay, U.S. Army, Iwo Jima, Okinawa. Are these really in black and white? Well, I guess that isn't black and white because there's green up there. Okay, so they're using actual photographs. That could have explained it. I don't know. I think it would have been more impactful if they had colorized it a bit, but I guess artistic choice. Tried to keep it more authentic, I guess, with the black and white photographs. I don't know. I don't know. I think I could go for it more in color, but that's a personal choice there. Okay, Lion Chief stuff. Okay, we've got our Spirit of America, CSX, Canadian National, Santa Fe. Is that a Conrail? There's a Conrail, and then we've got the 440s, the William Mason, William Crooks, and Northern Central? Northern Central, okay. Okay, what do we have over here in the comments? I saw that one. Had my eye on the Metca Custom G1. Not a fan of diesels, so Metca wins. Okay, do each his own. For the price line on ones for the Santa Fe set, you can get a third reel brass. Yeah, yeah, definitely, and I hope Lionel reruns a T1 and the Freedom Train. That would be cool with the 2026 version. That would be nice, you know, with the Redding T1, especially with the current renovation. That does make sense. Okay, more Star Wars stuff. This is new stuff. Oh, they brought the Phantom back. Oh boy, that brings back memories of the 90s. And okay, R2-D2. I guess this is the Walking Brakeman car, but with an R2-D2 on top. Open doors. Okay, what do we have? Bantha, burgers. Okay, why do these on an old-time wood-sided car? I don't get that. Why try to do a futuristic Star Wars design? Okay, we've got our mainline crossing gates, and customized, you know, is that it? Okay, so not as thick as I was expecting, but there it is. Some extra offerings for the rest of 2025. I do like the Bicentennial stuff. It's eye-catching. I really like the Frisco Caboose, as it's pretty authentic to the original. Yeah, the Founding Fathers series. It's interesting that they're going with the 440 concept for the Bicentennial. Well, it's not Bicentennial. It's the Semi-Sesquicentennial or something like that this time. But yeah, to throw a little curveball in there with the 19th century stuff. Yeah, I like that. I like the big, the auto parts, boxcars as well. That's a cool thing. So, yeah, a little mix of new and old in there. A pretty decent balance. Some things to keep interesting. But yeah, again, no big blockbuster steam locomotive. They've got the 440s, but they're going with the passenger sets as their attempt at the home run here at the end. So, on one end, you can say, yeah, it's just another F3, but they are upgraded, and yeah, it is what it is. So, is there anything in here I'm going to be plunking out my money for? Probably not. But yeah, there's enough stuff up here. The sets are a little high. The passenger sets are really high. These cars at $139, I would think probably street value, they're probably going to be, yeah, $100, $105. Still kind of a lot for a piece of rolling stock, but they are a rather unique car. So, that's it. So, apparently, this live stream thing does work. Yay! Got all the technical stuff worked out. Actually, I had a problem. I was getting ready to go live, and my internet server went kaput from a storm that went through earlier. And so, I had to totally reboot all of my routers and everything, and I didn't think this was going to happen at all. Okay, so anyway, go back here. Not a fan of the Star Wars stuff, but seeing the Phantom coming back, there we go. Yeah, so that's nice. One of the reasons they have to raise prices to pay for licensing. Yes, I'm sure that is part of it. Hello, back. Yeah, speaking of the Redding T1s, they should do a 2102. That would, yeah, while you're at it, you might as well do not only the Freedom Train, redo the Chessie 2101, and yeah, the Redding and Blue Mountain, while you're at it. And especially even back in the original Redding scheme, you can recreate the Iron Horse Rambles as well. Hoping Lionel doesn't go the MTH Atlas route for catalogs. Yeah, having constant catalogs, yeah. Yeah, MTH, they just keep hitting you over and over and over again. Once a week, it seems, they've got a new release, plus all the customs. So, that would be the next thing here with all the Lionel stuff. I'm sure there's going to be tons of custom runs. I'm sure, you know, looking in the email the next couple of days, I expect, you know, I'm just throwing this out there, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was like, you know, an SD38 in the Blackbonnet scheme from Patrick's Trains. I mean, they seem to love the Blackbonnets, or even the 440 in the Blackbonnet scheme. That would be ridiculous, but hey, it'd be colorful. So, who knows what they'll do. But yeah, I'm sure there's going to be lots of customs coming out of this stuff too. So, there we go. If Lionel does, you'll have free content to talk about. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Well, thanks for joining in. I didn't know how many people were going to be watching this time of night, and it looks like the first live stream is working. So, I'll have to do this some more now that I'm getting a feel for this software. I feel good about it. So, thank you for joining, and I'm gonna just wrap it up for tonight, because I've got an early morning tomorrow. But this stuff is going to be, you know, up there for a while. And again, thank you very much for supporting the channel. Thank you very much for tuning in and giving the positive feedback over here on the comments. Love it. Love it. Love it. So, yeah, I'll have to do this some more. So, we'll have to look forward to that. But for now, anyway, I'm going to be signing off and hitting the sack, because I've got to get up at five o'clock in the morning. So, thanks again, and have a wonderful night.