Factory Errors
By Shannon Sikora

As mid summer hits the east coast, how many train collectors are busy keeping up with their train? I have recently received two Lionel 1998 Happy Holiday cars. When opening the box I was wondering why a man that consistently sells me variations was shipping two 1998 Holiday cars. After putting the cars on the side for some time I went back to them to see why he decided to ship those cars.

I at once started to open the two boxes and put the two cars onto the bar in my train room. After spending some time with the two cars, I started to see that both cars where Lionel factory error cars. The two cars differed in there own ways.

The first car was missing the gold lettered 1998, 9700, and Blt-98 Lionel to the left side of the door. The other car was missing the red lettered “L” and “American legend” to the right side of the door. Collecting factory errors for some time now, I have discovered many hours of enjoyment.

The next group of pictures are three preproduction samples. The first picture is a Conrail GP-7 with dark blue painted ends. Over the dark blue ends is a white logo, in the center of the logo is the word Central. Then Lionel took a clear decal and placed it over the white logo. The clear decal had the red lettering New York System.

The second picture is similar to the first on except that its’ on a pinkish color shell that has New York Central painted on the side in white.

The final shell is a paint sample for the MKT Lionel made for the Sears catalog. The shell also has black and red hand writing on it. As you can see in the picture it looks like some type of air test.