I think you had to live through the era. Before MPC we had a couple of pages for a Lionel catalog and that was a smaller reprint of the year before. My friends who were into Lionel where sure Lionel would be out of business soon. Prices were really starting to go up for used stuff and that was all we could get. Suddenly there were cheap F-3s, 6464 sized box cars for around $5 bucks and new stuff coming out fast. Yes, it was not as detailed and all diesels were single motored, but it was cheap and a lot was available. There were a few real advances. Fast angle wheels for one. You could pull a ton of cars with a single motor F unit. It's easy to look back from todays eyes and say MPC was junk. It saved Lionel and kept a lot of us in the hobby.
Don
