Abandoned and Forgotten: Lionel's Modern 50' Box Car

[Anonymous]

During the 1990's somebody at Lionel put the Railbox and Southern Railway "Wave" on the available 40' Boxcars. Those Railbox and Southern Railway paint schemes were designed for Modern 50' Boxcars.

In 1999 Lionel introduced the Modern 50' Box Car in 4 Roadnames.
NS/SOU, BNSF, UP, CSX.
In 2000 there was Railbox and Rock Island.
Then came Ontario Northland and later Bangor and Aroostook.

Then some new Standard "O:" Scale Freight Cars came along. These were even more detailed and it pushed the Modern 50' Boxcars out of the scene.
Oddly enough the older Exterior-Braced 50' Double-Door Boxcar is still being produced.

The Southern Railway "Wave" Scheme has not been applied to the 50' Modern Boxcar, like it is supposed to be. There has only been the NS/SOU version.
The regular SOUTHERN 50' Boxcar markings have yet to be applied to this Boxcar, even though it was once extremely common.

Chicago & North Western in the 1980's Safety Yellow scheme would have made sense, but now Union Pacific is suing Lionel over the rights to use everything from the past of UP mergers. That might hold up everything.

Hopefully when Lionel comes out of the Lawsuit Tunnel this year, somebody will remember to mill out the injection mold for the frame with the right truck bolster. It needs the correct truck bolster to mount the new and improved ASF Truck Frames with Rotating Timken Roller Bearings. The old die-cast trucks are obviously wrong for a Modern 50' Boxcar.

It would also be a great idea if the molded on Hand Irons were filled in and replaced with wire hand irons.

This was a great boxcar it just needs some improvements for a revival.

Andrew F.