Why am I supposed to be excited again?

Just saw Lionel's Christmas catalog. Why am I supposed to be excited again? It's a retread of quite a few items Lionel has already produced repeatedly.

A G-Gauge Polar Express? Ok, the first one was nice but it's getting a little overdone. I'll be interested to see how Lionel reproduces the trains from Harry Potter.

I am a Harry Potter fan thus I am hoping/wishing Lionel does this right.

Why am I so hard on Lionel? Because I expect them to be better than everyone else, that's why. The catalog is weak. Apparently Lionel doesn't discern between short term profit taking and long term market building. I hope the catalogs get better and I hope their are no more repeats of the less than superb #45 Gateman.

Come on guys, this isn't rocket science.

M

PS Sorry Lionel, we can't all be like Certain Toy Train Magazines and kiss your ass.

Our TCA Library

Humm..., did they make this in Standard gauge or just in 0 gauge? I'll bet you know the answer.

What we have here is the cover of the October, 1992 Train Collector's Quarterly. I ordered a copy of this issue from Jan at the TCA's library because this issue contains an article that I found very helpful in my current research on early Lionel. The article, penned by old timer Max Knoecklein (64-1079) focuses on the discovery of what is believed to be the 1901 Lionel catalog. At the time of the 1992 article, this was thought to be the oldest Lionel catalog known, however, since then an even older catalog has surfaced, discovered by former TCA president Paul Wassermann, which he believes dates from 1900. Digging around doing some detective work with these documents is interesting. We're fortunate to have the TCA library, staffed by a really helpful librarian named Jan. Send her an email and she will try her best to answer your questions and provide whatever back issues or photocopies you require.

Jim