I wasn't aware, that's good you know more. I tried to dig and dig on it after getting it. I wanted one for a good decade when I learned of it ages ago, kind of forgot about it. To find a $300+ item in a box for $30 from the old lady who was the original owner was mind blowing so I snapped it up with no regrets. I put good time into de-rusting the spots off the track and using high end bike lube on the gears/spring to get it to fly like new. But there are still track issues I need to sort.
All I could find was the 2 year range that it was in sales for the spring loaded kinetic model versus a powered one I didn't know even existed.
Truth be told I have a large wooden chest here I inherited when my grandma passed a couple years back, it was from the same decade, my uncles massive set of 0-gauge powered American Flyer trains. I have like 3 santa fe engines and probably a dozen people/freight cars along with lots of track, transformer, buildings and other stuff and it bugs me as I have no place I can hope to set it up in this home.

Honestly I'm wondering if the powered systems still even work or decayed from age but I would imagine they should despite being stored in that very box in a garage for decades out west. Thankfully not rusted, and well stored in all the original wafer cardboard rolls and boxes.