118 Freight/Passenger Train Set
General Information
The following information has been collected from original newspapers, catalogs, and magazines, some of which are freely available for reference below. The rest can be found in the site’s gallery. No aggregate catalogs (BrickLink, Brickset, etc.) were used.
Instructions: H-2529
Advertised Part Count(s): 451 pieces
First Year Confirmed Available: 1969
USA only, Sears exclusive.
Most Likely Retirement Date: 1969
Its only known appearance in all print media is in the 1969 Sears Christmas Wishbook.
Aliases: 5-car Freight or 4-car Passenger Train
Retail Price(s): $20.00
Rarity Score(Rarity Index): 7/7
Known Box/Packing Variants
As the 118 was only produced for a single season and was USA only, it is not likely to have any variants.
Box/Overview
As mentioned in the 842 Town Plan's post, later Sears exclusives were variants of preexisting sets, whether derived from Samsonite sets or European sets. A good example of a release of a Samsonite set is the 371 Motorized Truck Set, which was just a Sears exclusive version of the 310 Motorized Truck Set , both of which released in 1968.
The Sears 118 Train is an example of a rerelease of a European set (the 119 Super Train Set) with some caveats. For one, the most obvious, the set numbers are slightly different.
It wasn't unheard of for Samsonite to choose their own numbers for their releases of sets available elsewhere in the world, a quick example is the 223 Adventure Set, in Europe it carried the number 033. Instead, the 119 -> 118 discrepancy has no real basis for explanation. There are a multitude of possibilities as to how Samsonite decided to change the number.
Consistent with other Sears catalog sets, the 118 sold only in a plain box. This is one of the only US Samsonite sets we have no known surviving examples with the box documented online. It is almost certain dozens still exist, and several people have scanned and shared the instructions. But as for boxed examples, they are either still with their original families or have quietly been sold to collectors.
Contents
Another difference for the US 118 version of the 119: it lacks many specialty train elements available elsewhere in the world. As US Samsonite only imported basic train elements (no signals, crossings, gates, etc.), this set completely omits them, as seen in the image below:
Instead, visible on the instructions, the set included extra parts to construct an alternate model. That model is not included in the instructions, and the parts that were included to build it are currently unknown (though approximations can easily be made).
It is possible there were more bonus elements, but we currently don't know.