Lionel MPC F3's?

I'm going to do some checking on this one. I think the 8404 Turbine (perhaps my all-time favorite MPC locomotive) is one of those pieces that they planned to make in Mexico, and had the vast majority of parts produced there with that in mind. But ultimately, final assembly and pack-out were done here in the states.  Don't quote me on that just yet. I'm fairly certain the boxes say Made in Mexico.

Yes, the coupler armature -- "plastic locking arm" -- was one of the things that MPC modified.

And you're absolutely correct about 9150 Gulf Tank Cars coming with leftover postwar AAR trucks. I forgot about this one. These were the earliest versions produced, and are usually the scarce variations that have been painted white over leftover postwar orange tank car bodies.

So besides the 9160 Illinois Central Porthole Caboose and the 9150 Gulf Tank Car, what other cars used the leftover AAR trucks? I can only recall one more -- the infamous 6560 Bucyrus Erie Crane Car from 1971. Please let me know if you see any others!

Regards,

Todd

Rob,

Darn it -- I forgot about the MPC-era barrel cars!

TRW

quote:

I'm fairly certain the boxes say Made in Mexico.

I checked my 8404 turbine. The box has a very thin paper label affixed to the box that says "Made and Litho in USA".

Great catch on the 6805 Radio Active Waste Car service manual page. Thinking about it, it makes sense -- most of the other cars and cabooses that need a ground could get it through their stamped-metal frames. Since the 6805 doesn't have a metal frame, it would need a ground wire. If you've declared any of those extra trucks you purchased as "surplus," I could use a few more if they're available.

Originally Posted by C W Burfle:

I just dug mine out, and it says Made in Mexico, without any trace of a label.

My feeling is that his one was accidentally not labeled, versus it truly being made in Mexico.

I think I know who the Lionel engineer was on that project, so I'm going to shoot him a note and see what he remembers.

You guys are right. MPC saved Lionel Trains. If you look at the Lionel catalog of 1968 it had the same cover as 1966, 67. But it had no pages. It just unfolded as one page. I remember thinking at the time that this is the end of Lionel. MPC saved the company and kept a lot of Lionel fans in trains. Don

Hello guys and gals..........

Did the MPC change the tooling to make gears out of plastic instead of metal from the postwar era. The gears are still made of plastic to this day on the lionel F-3's since the first early MPC F-3's came out in 1973 or 74 ? Early F-3's uses white color on the gears and later changed to black color gears but still plastic.  My #18117 Santa Fe F-3's came with black plastic gears and I changed over to metal just like the postwar 2383's.

The woman who loves the S.F.5011,2678,2003,200

Tiffany

This is one of my favorite threads.  I love digging at these details from the past.  Whats special about the 6560 Bucyrus Erie Crane Car from 1971?

quote:

If you've declared any of those extra trucks you purchased as "surplus," I could use a few more if they're available.

I will see how many I have left.

the early MPC days are really interesting to me. Wish there was a lot more info out there about it. Posts like this one are awesome to find out some of the back story 

Yep, great thread.

Based on the mention of it above, I ordered "Inside The Lionel Trains Fun Factory." Was aware of the book but was never interested enough to get it. Sounds like it has some great Lionel history. 

quote:

 Interestingly, it was the die-cast wheel that was the true origin of the "Fast Angle" moniker, but I'll do that story on another day.

I am looking forward to reading your take on the creation of the fast angle wheels.
I remember there being an article in one of the train magazines on the subject back when they were created. Probably RMC, as they were more friendly towards Lionel fans.

I have had fast angle wheels that were coated with a coppery looking material before being blackened. Would that anodized or plated?

Really loving this thread.  Todd, I'll buy that book when you haven't written it too!

Jon

hello guys and gals............

I think the postwar F-3's came with a 2 piece assembly horn and bit later came one piece die-cast metal horn up to 1966 and 1970- ? MPC era changed to chrome plated plastic horn?  Then LTI era switched back to 2 piece horn again is that about right ?

the woman who loves the S.F.5011,2678,2003,200

Tiffany

And just to complete the circle, here's a photo from a buddy of mine showing the underside of the postwar 6805 Radioactive Waste Car with the hole-and-eyelet truck that we've been discussing.

I'm beginning to wonder if that hole was semi-permanently added to the bar-end truck stamping tooling at that point. There weren't hardly any metal trucks used between the time of the 6805's first appearance in 1958 and the reissue of the 6464 boxcars with metal trucks in 1969, which helps explain things a bit.

Another minor mystery kinda/sorta solved, now only 9,999 more to go.

TRW

I find it fascinating that there was an article in Dupont's engineering magazine about the change MPC made to Delrin. Thanks for that information - I have never heard any reference to that before. I'll have to search that out.

The first mention of Delrin  use by Lionel was the 1960 catalog in their HO section for couplers and bearing clips.

Well, then I guess I'd sell two. Thanks, Jon!

There are a lot of Lionel articles in various industrial trade periodicals over the years, especially in the 1970's: Dupont's magazines (both Engineering Design and Dupont Magazine), Machine Design magazine, Production Engineering magazine, Transportation & Distribution Management magazine, etc.

Lionel has also been a "featured user" in a lot of catalogs and promotional literature for different companies. Two off the top of my head are Bristol Brass (involved with Lionel's use of ElectroCal heat transfers first used in late 1972) and Colorbox, who produced a lot of Lionel's product cartons (boxes) in the 1980's.

Come to think about it, one of the greatest articles about Lionel ever published, largely because of color imagery that doesn't appear ANYWHERE else, was from an industrial house organ in the late 1950's -- Steel Horizons from Allegheny Ludlum Steel. 

(P.S. Now you're probably getting an idea of what the "Paper" in my screen name refers to.)

While I couldn't find the reference you mentioned in 1960, I did find it in the 1959 Lionel catalog. Great catch, Chuck! I had no idea that Delrin dated back to the 1950's.

Somewhat off topic.  During the early '60's Chevrolet experimented with Delrin as a durable weight saver on the engine cooling fan for the aircooled Corvair.  Problem was that battery acid destroyed the plastic, which gave off a type of toxic formaldehyde gas.  Not a very safe idea considering the engines hot air supplied the cars interior heat.

Bruce

Looks like one of the articles that PaperTRW mentioned is on the auction site, looks like a pretty interesting article.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dupont...23bcb3#ht_2067wt_783

Todd is correct; in the 1959 catalog Lionel did mention the use of Delrin bearings for their HO bettendorf freight trucks.

November issue of the other magazine has a Focus on Classics article regarding transition freight cars of the early 1970s.

In addition to the fact that it carried over the postwar 6560 number (although in the catalog it used the new 6- prefix), it was also similar to the aforementioned 9150 Gulf tank car in that early versions used leftover Postwar era parts on it; in this case original AAR trucks & wheels; not the modified versions to work with the fast angle wheels and new uncoupling plungers.  So they are fairly hard to find (especially the original boxes) and can command premium prices.

Click on this link to see a pic of one that was auctioned off several years ago.

I wonder if MPC chose the symington wayne truck because the person in charge of retooling trucks knew nothing about trains and thought that was a normal truck to model?   

Are the plastic trucks that LTI replaced the symington wayne with considered AAR?

In answer to the first question:  Most likely.  Someone at MPC probably was rummaging through some railroad literature and just stumbled upon that truck design and decided to go with it because it looked modern.

In answer to your second question, the new truck design LTI came out with was not based on an AAR design; rather, it is roughly based on a prototype ASF ride-control freight truck (probably 100 ton).  I say roughly because the shape of the open cavities on the truck sideframes  aren't as symmetrical in relation to the truck as the real ones are (probably a carryover from the Symington-Wayne truck so that they wouldn't have to re-design the snap-in plastic pickup roller assemblies MPC designed for the S-W truck) and there's too much "clunk" below the roller bearing journals.  But it's definitely a much more representative of modern roller bearing trucks than what MPC came out with.