In its first shot at creating minature NYC subway trains, Lionel has pulled off a dead-on reproduction, reports the New York Times.
[Lionel events manager Thomas C.] Nuzzo said the four cars look like the R-27 cars that went into service in 1960, down to the checkered floors inside. Outside, they match the original color — ”kale green,” he said. (Most R-27 cars were painted red in the late 1970s and early ’80s; they were retired from the fleet in the 1990s.)
The signs identify the train as a QB. Mr. Nuzzo said the QB went over the Manhattan Bridge; the QT was routed through a tunnel under the East River. Mr. Nuzzo, 57, remembers it well. “It was the line my mom used to take me to Macy’s on,” he said.
The four-car set sells for $700. The Lionel trains even have the authentic sound of a New York subway car.
No. 8026 works with Lionel’s latest operating system, which is more elaborate than the one that powers another new Lionel model, a replica of a Metro-North commuter rail car. The system on No. 8026 is so authentic that it mimics the noises that subway trains make. Lionel sent a sound engineer to record noise in Brooklyn subway tunnels and on modern subways. That noise is played back as the four-car train makes its rounds.
Nuzzo did not say if that includes the sound of other people’s iPods inside the train.