Lionel Tell-Tale Reindeer Christmas Car

When the 2017 Lionel catalog came out early in the year, like most years, I ended up pre-ordering a few items from TrainWorld that I knew would trickle in throughout the year.  That's what most often happens - starting around Halloween, the cars start to arrive.  But, just like last year, a car that has Christmas theme'ing arrived in January...post-Christmas.

Here's the post from last February showing the Buddy the Elf boxcars that arrived late.  This year's late arrival is the car you can see above:  a Tell-Tale Reindeer Christmas Car.

If you look closely, you'll see that this is part of the "North Pole Central Lines" and is marked with "Reindeer Transport Express" on the sides along with some drawings of Christmas symbols like teddy bears, drums and a brass instrument.

So, you're probably wondering...what is a "Tell Tale" car?  Welp, it is a car with an animal inside that kind of 'ducks'.  In this case, it is a reindeer that has it's head sticking out of the top of a box car for the majority of the trip, then when it approaches this little low clearance area, it 'ducks' down as it passes, then emerges out the top again.

Here's a video of other Lionel Tell Tale cars that gives you a sense for how they work:

Here's the side panel of the box showing the 6-84341 product number and describes how it is FasTrack compatible.  (That's good!  Because we run FasTrack!)