Searchlight Cars

Searchlight cars -- are they real or a figment of the Lionel engineering team? This debate has been going on for years. When reviewing real railroads throughout the world, there are a handful of searchlight cars on the rails, but all appear to be custom built for a specific railroad, region or purpose.

In Lionelville, that did not prevent Lionel engineers from creating a new, interesting and novel freight car with lots of play value for dads and their children. Lionel originally introduced the searchlight car in 1949 as the 6520. Throughout the remaining postwar era, various other forms of a searchlight car remained in the product line until the final year of postwar production: 1969.

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