Lionel made the Congressional set in 1955 and 1956. The set was pulled by a 2340, or later 2360, five-stripe Tuscan GG1 loco. The extruded aluminum bodies were changed to create areas for metallic strips with lettering to be applied. Collectors call these areas “Flat Channels.”
On the Congressional Cars the strip above the windows says “Pennsylvania.” The car names, “Betsy Ross,” “Alexander Hamilton,” “William Penn,” and “Molly Pitcher” are on the lower strips. Car number 2541 ,2542, 2543, and 2543 are on the window strips and can be seen in the window beside the car door.
No variations of the cars or the car boxes are known.
But here’s something interesting. The cars above came in over stamped boxes. The original car numbers on the boxes are blackened out, and the Congressional numbers are stamped on the label flap.
When I got the set above I didn’t think much of the boxes. Or the set. It was just a fairly nice set of cars with three original boxes. I didn’t get the box for the 2541 Observation car.
The common collector thinking behind over stamped boxes is Lionel was trying to fill an order, but lacked boxes, so they relabeled boxes from obsolete inventory.
This makes sense. But not for these Congressional car boxes. Take a good look and see if you can spot the oddity:
The upper box is a bit easier to read the number that has been blacked out. . . 2553. The lower box is a 2552, and the 3rd box I have says 2553. These are boxes for Canadian Pacific cars.
The Canadian Pacific set was made in 1957 only. It was a poor seller and is highly desirable today. Much more than the Congressional set.
So at this point, either Madison Hardware took unwanted Canadian Pacific cars and redecorated them – including the window strips, and then relabeled the boxes, or Madison bought parts to make up Congressional cars and Lionel only had boxes for the Canadian Pacific cars.
It would be interesting to see if Madison Hardware was offering Congressional cars after 1957 in their Model RailRoader ads.
A note about Madison and Model Railroader. Based on a quick survey of a few ads, in the 1950s Madison seems to have run two types of ads – new stock ads with primarily current catalog offerings and old stock at discounted prices ads.