Lionel Lines Gondolas

ABOUT LIONEL GONDOLAS

POST-WAR GONDOLAS ON THE LIONEL LINES

As you make your way through these pages, you will find that I have a keen interest in relatively ordinary Lionel offerings. While I would enjoy having an obscure locomotive or specially colored prototype freight as much as the next Lionel fan, I'm just not a collector. Rather, I run all of the trains in my fleet (as opposed to collection) and my choices with regards to road names has my areas of interest falling into relatively common categories. Among these are very ordinary items such as Sunoco Tank Cars, Lehigh Valley Hoppers and Lionel Gondolas of all varieties, including the common New York Central models.

Like so many fans of Lionel post-war trains, we had a couple of sets when I was growing up in New Jersey. These being acquired in the late 40's and early 50's. As stated previously, if you had a freight set from that era, there were a few items you were sure to have, and the New York Central Gondola is certainly one of them. We had one in black and one in red and these hard working freight cars carried anything and everything - marbles, jacks, plastic toy soldiers, screws, nails, bottlecaps and various hardware.

Good metal pieces were a premium load as these could be loaded and unloaded by the electro-magnetic gantry crane. Staples and paperclips worked great for staging these busy days on the railroad. Of course, staples had to be separated into individual staples, as those long connected staple clips were too heavy. When my Dad would yell out from his desk "where are all the staples?", you would just hope he didn't put two and two together, as I had rifled his desk for anything magnetic and cool to load and unload. My poor parents, I can't begin to recount all the mayhem I created building stuff for trains and later slot car setups when I was a kid. My Mom was an avid seamstress, and cutting cardboard boxes apart to make a mountain using her "pinking shears" was a b-i-g mistake. I'm pretty certain I got hit in the head with a pot over that little misjudgment. After all, you really couldn't deny having done it when your mountains had a scalloped edge.

Back to gondolas. Lionel produced gondolas in generally two sizes - short and long. The short gondolas being around eight inches, the longs being not quite ten inches. The #2452 Pennsylvania Gondola pictured on this page is an example of a nice short gondola that is of reasonable quality and ideal for layouts with smaller diameter curves, such as O31. The overhang going around the curve is much less pronounced than with "long" gondolas. Many of the other "short" gondolas had a notable feel of "cheapness" to them, and while there are many colorful models - red, blue, yellow, gray, bright green - in a number of road names, but mostly "Lionel" - they just have too much of a "toy-like" feel for my taste.

The classic Lionel gondola remains the 6462, in my opinion. While it's length of nearly ten inches makes it a bit cumbersome, it is the model we all grew up with and these had well done white stamped lettering, brake wheels, four wheel die cast trucks and positive couplers. To me, they have a traditional "low-slung" look and can be decked out nicely with a variety of loads. These were available in many colors, and I have my share of them in traditional red and black - both of which were original cars my Dad bought for us when we were kids. I have also managed to acquire a very nice green model with the original wooden barrels supplied with the car.

As I make my way through building the Lionel Lines layout, I will find suitable settings for these, and I will build realistic loads for these great post-war cars.



	#6112 LIONEL - One of the most common post-war gondolas. This is generally grouped in the category of "short" gondolas. The #6112 series typically came with four white or red canisters as a load. I have seen these in black with white lettering and white with black lettering, as well as the blue model pictured above.

#2452 PENNSYLVANIA - This Gondola, also a "short" model featured a plastic body on a metal frame with standard four wheel trucks. The length of these cars is ideal for smaller curves, such as O31..

#6162 NEW YORK CENTRAL - The 6162 is the longer Gondola variation, introduced in the late 50's. These are a step down from the 6462 which were most popular in post-war sets, as these have plastic trucks.

#6462 NEW YORK CENTRAL - The classic post-war Lionel Gondola - the 6462. Produced throughout most of the 50's the 6462 came in black, various shades of red, green and pink for the "Girl's Set"..

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