The post war Lionel 6014 box car and other post-war box cars made from the same tooling present some good examples of cheap classics. They also present a few challenges for collector types, and they also have uses for Marx and American Flyer fans. In this blog post, I will explore this frequently overlooked little brother of the 6464 series.
Origins of the Lionel 6014
The first Lionel 6014 was actually numbered x6014. Lionel lettered it for the Pennsylvania railroad, but also plastered a large Baby Ruth advertisement on one half of the car. This continued a practice Lionel began in the 1930s, with its tin lithographed 1679 and 2679 baby Ruth box cars.
These cars came in several colors, including white, orange, and red. There was also a variant numbered x1004 that used the ill-fated Scout trucks.
The Baby Ruth cars are rather popular, but also very common, so they are very reasonably priced today.
The Interstate Commerce Commission banned the practice of billboard boxcars in the real world in 1934, but Lionel continued it on the 6014 box cars throughout the post war era. Lionel produced 6014s advertising Bosco chocolate syrup, Chun King food products, Wix air filters, and Airex fishing tackle. Fishing tackle seems like a random choice, but there was a reason for that one. In its efforts to diversify in the mid 1950s, Lionel purchased Airex.
A Campbell’s Soup variant of the 6014 may or may not exist.
Ship it on the Frisco
In 1957, Lionel introduced a 6014 box car lettered for the St Louis-San Francisco railroad. On the right side of the car, where the advertisements had been, the St Louis-San Francisco variants bore the catchphrase “Ship it on The Frisco!”
The white 6014 variant is one of the most common post-war 027 Lionel freight cars, so you can ship it on the Frisco on your own layout very affordably.
Scale of the 6014 box cars
I don’t know why this is controversial, but the Lionel 6014 cars are 1/64 scale. They are shorter in all three dimensions than the 6464 boxcar, or what modern day Lionel calls traditional scale.
If you take a tape measure or ruler to a 6014 box car, you’ll find these cars are seven and a half inches long. A 40 ft box car in 1/48 scale would be 10 inches long. A 6014 is 7 and 1/2 inches long, 25% less. 1/64 scale is 25% smaller than 1/48 scale.
So that means you can put Marx 3/16 trucks on a 6014 and it blends in just fine with Marx 3/16 box cars. It also gives you a bit of variety, since the 6014 has double doors where the smaller Marx plastic box cars have single doors.
This also means American Flyer fans can do the same thing. You can put S scale trucks on a Lionel 6014 and it looks great with post-war American Flyer rolling stock. The 6014 is slightly taller than a post-war Flyer boxcar, but that is because Gilbert used a rather short boxcar as its prototype. During post-war era, there was more variance in height of 40 ft box cars than there is today.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.