Upgrade questions, traditional lionel passenger cars

To remove the roof, squeeze the windows and the roof lifts off.  You will see windows on each side that are thisker.  They stand out, you will see them.  The cars are loud because they are light.  A small bit of weight will give you what you want.

On the pickups, I think they might be the same as the caboose.  That is for the 4 wheel truck.  I would look for something that would get the job done.  The stock pickups like everything MPC made were junk.

Here's the removal,

http://www.lionel.com/media/se...ents/70-7227-250.pdf

and the part number for the pick-up.  600-9050-150

Bill

If you hold the cars at an angle, and examine the windows, you will notice that the second window ( I think that is the correct one) from each end are flush with the car body. If you press on the thicker windows and push toward the roof, the roof and window should be released from the body. Repeat on the other end of the car and the roof should lift off. The roof and the windows are one piece, and pushing in on the proper window releases the assembly from the car body. This avoids any pry marks on the roof or body. 

If you use the LED circuit that GRJ sells, or roll your own, they help prevent lighting flicker and you wouldn't need 2 pickups per car. 

Bruce

Thanks guys, I'll try this out in a little bit. 

As to the noise, maybe a combo of weight and some foam together, it couldn't hurt!

Bill - thanks for the part number!

You guys are great - love the forum!

I did an LED upgrade of a set of those once.  I used the strips and since it was before my lighting circuit, I hand-wired a few components to power them.

The biggest problem with those is getting the roof off, they assumed that you had at least three hands for the task!

Like Marty says, I think one thing that helps those cars is some weight.  I glued stacks of large washers on the floor to add weight, made a big difference.

You're right about the roof!!  I got it off the first time and showed it to my son.  He wanted to see how it came off, so I put it back on, and the took three times as long to get it off the second time!

There's a thread somewhere about taking those off.  I ended up using a couple of plastic rulers to help hold some of the windows out while I pressed the other ones.