I bought this set from the original owner a few months ago. The trains aren't anything special, I saw the box and had to have it.
Here's the box:
(The dog's name is Pudgy, she always checks to make sure no cats sneak into the house in the train boxes I bring home.)
Here's the box end with number:
The box is 33 inches long, 17 inches wide and 7 inches tall.
It came with the trains on the top of the box, a bunch of track and the remains of a trestle set.
Trains are 217 Boston and Maine AB, 6062 Gondola with Cable Reels, 6819 flat with Christmas trees, 6823 flat with ICBM missles, 6826 flat with helicopter and 6017 Caboose.
The trains don't explain why the box is so big. I originally thought it might have had one of those long plastic bridges to go with the trestle set, but that leaves a bunch of room in the box.
The loco dates the set to 1959 or later, but if it was later the set would appear in Schmidt's book. Looking at 1959 production, Lionel sold a large cardboard ticket booth that year.
I did a search on Google for Lionel X-816NA brings up a 2009 Lionel Roars article by Paul Ambrose. It does come with a Ticket booth and a hat. It was a 1959 unadvertised special set sold by one Department store in each town. He was showing a different set and included the Lionel Dealer ad showing that set and this one.
His article is on page 20 of the June 2009 Lion roars.
https://www.lionelcollectors.org/!userfiles/editor/docs/TheLionRoars/vol38-no5-jun09.pdfI went to a show in LA in March and Bob at the table next to me had a ticket booth for $50 so I bought it to see if it fits in the box.
Here's the ticket booth on top of the set box:
Looks like it fits.
Paul Ambrose's article refers to an article in the Jan. 1993 TCA Quarterly. I dug that issue out and found no new information. I did get a better shot of the orginal flyer for the set. It's a paper sized sheet with 8 of the department store NA sets.
Here's the corner with the set:
Neat stuff.
