El Capitan is Gifted to the Garage, the Super Chief is Stolen!

 After moving out of our home, I felt bad every time we visited our friends as there was no train running on the track I had installed in the garage. So for Christmas 2008, I presented my friend with his very own brand-new Lionel Santa Fe "El Capitan" 6-30001 set. These sets were produced from 2005-2009 and have a single tri-color stripe on the cars that match the tri-color stripe from the "Warbonnet" paint scheme on the locomotive.

I cleaned the tracks in his garage that I had installed five years previous and in no time the new train was running again!

The Lionel Santa Fe El Capitan 30001 was a 4-pc starter set released in the mid 2000's designed to replicate the pre-1954 Santa Fe El Capitan consist before the addition of the Big Dome and Hi-Level cars. This set featured the ready-to-run Lionel Santa Fe 6-24568 #158 Diesel Locomotive Engine w/electronic Rail-Sounds decorated in the Warbonnet paint scheme, two tri-color single stripe lighted Passenger Cars 6-25130 #3103, 6-25131 #3105, and one lighted rear Observation car 6-25132  #3198. The set also included an 80W transformer and enough FasTrack to build a nice oval around your Christmas tree.

The Lionel Super Chief waiting for a new track to roll down.

Meanwhile, my 3-car Diner-theme garage had not yet materialized and my Super Chief became shelf art in my living room proudly displayed above the television. The Super Chief sat quietly waiting for a new home until our home was burglarized and when we were out of town. When returned home after being away for several days the house was ransacked and the burglars had made multiple trips in and out of the house and had hauled out everything of any value, including my beloved Super Chief.

With the train stolen, I didn't have the heart to buy a new one and I let another 5 years slip away without a train. Every time I would visit my friend, I would look up at the train covered with dust and the tracks piled with wood and other long-flat objects one can store on a high shelf in a garage. It seemed my Santa Fe trains had suffered the same fate as the original streamliners, their heyday was over, people lost interest and the train bells rang no more.