520 Lionel Lines Boxcab

Production:  1956 & 1957

History
The 520 Boxcab Electric engine was a newly designed railroad item produced by Lionel in 1956. It is based upon a real-life boxcab engine built by General Electric and sold to a company in South America. Surprisingly, Lionel's model is an excellent copy of its real-life counterpart.

Features
The 520 Boxcab electric engine ran unchanged for both years. Standard features include: 2-4-0 wheel arrangement, unpainted red body with white lettering, three-position E-unit, operating coupler at one end and a die-cast non-operating coupler at the other end plus a single pantograph on the roof. The pantograph is a fragile item is usually broken or missing. Finally, there is no headlight on the boxcab.

Separately, the 520 did head up one freight set in 1956. It was Lionel's least expensive set for that year and included a box car, gondola and caboose.

Additional Detail, Photos & Box Information
The 520 is a peppy-little engine capable of pulling a reasonable size train and is stronger than most of the other motorized units offered by Lionel during the postwar era.

Only Known Variation - Shown in the photo above. - All 520s were unpainted red with white lettering.

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