NICE.
It's a shame when they don't get played with. It's like feeding a dog salad.
Those are painted aluminum cars. As far as I know the uncataloged sets were painted, and the cataloged ones were chrome. The 289e is uncataloged.
I had a boxed gray 289E freight set with all the boxes and the set box. I bought it on eBay in about 1998. One of my first ebay purchases. The woman didn't show the boxes in the pictures and ruined them with tape and scribbles. She shipped the set to me in the setbox with the lionel label hacked up so it was unreadable. I could have cried when the mailman handed the box to me.