1946 LIONEL O GUAGE S2 TURBINE LOCO & COAL TENDER

[javinda]

sold at a 2009 auction at serioustoyz.com

"S2 Turbine Locomotive & Coal Tender" #671/671W, 1946, Lionel Corp., 'O' gauge, 19", heavy die cast; this is this 1st edition of this post-war classic... the only year Lionel used a bulb to heat the smoke pit; more, this is one of the first few off the assembly line because the keystone on the boiler is a rubber stamping in white (shortly after this example was produced, red decals were used until the S2 was dropped from the product line in the mid 1950s); engine is C7.5 w/ some minor edge chips; tender is C8, scarce w/ rubber stamped keystone

https://www.serioustoyz.com/LotDetail.a ... oryid=1409

[paulrace]

Here's an image of the thing from serioustoyz.com The PRR original was a remarkable engine, one of the last attempts to keep steam engines profitable in the light of lower-maintenance diesels. It worked well, but still required more work to keep running than RRs wanted to invest.

turbine.jpg (50.83 KiB) Viewed 43473 times

The Lionel adaptation was remarkable, too. Note the blind center drivers so it could negotiate tight curves. A real O scale model of this thing would have been nearly twice as long as the Lionel version, but they still represented the thing well enough to be quite impressive on a layout.

[winced36]

Here's a Lionel 681 I "refurbished" a few months ago. Runs like a clock but the smoke-unit needs some attention. The 681 features magnetraction, smoke, light and whistling 2671W tender. The turbines are pretty common Lionel locomotives, and to me, represent the postwar era to a tee...they must have made hundreds of thousands of these 671/681/2020's...alot of kids had them.

Paul