@Rider Sandman posted:The 15” Lionel cars will be the same size as your Chief cars only nicer and aluminum. I have an ABBA set of ATSF Legacy F-units from a recent catalog. I run 072 and 063 curves. The 21” cars are too big for 072 (to my eye). To me, 18” cars are the sweet spot. I think Lionel and/or KLine made some in aluminum, but they are hard to find. The MTH 18” cars are nice and have been made in ATSF over and over again. The current releases are “plated stainless” and are really, really nice. That’s what I bought for my Legacy F units. Steve Nelson (Mr Muffins) usually has them in stock, including the add-on cars. The LEDs in the new MTH cars are also a plus. Having said all of that, you should check to see if they will work on 036. It may be that the 15” cars are your only option unless you are willing to add bigger curves (always a good idea!). Enjoy your new engines.
A few comments about the foregoing. First of all, the 15" aluminum Lionel passenger cars are not the same size as the cars in your No. 30178 Ready-to-Run set. Those are plastic cars, smaller and completely different from Lionel's 15" aluminum cars. (As you may know, Santa Fe never had any red-striped passenger cars - all their streamlined passenger cars were unpainted stainless steel.) 18" cars won't work for you, given that you have 36" curves. The plated MTH cars mentioned above, MTH No. 20-64038 (the 4-car set), has 18" cars, and they require 0-42 curves minimum.
MTH has also recently produced a set of Santa Fe cars in the RailKing line, which are 15" cars. These are No. 30-68123 (4-car set) and matching No. 30-68124 (2-car set). There are also a couple of extra single coach cars available. Mr. Muffin Trains has these cars in stock. They will not be as detailed as the 18" MTH cars, but they will work fine on your layout, and look much better with your scale set of F-3s. Note that while they have interiors, they are all molded in the same color, and have no passenger figures, so you'd have to open the cars and add those if you want them. All MTH passenger cars, except some made about 20 + years ago, are made of plastic.
Incidentally, if you're going to run an A-B-A set of engines, you'll want to have at least a 6-car set of passenger cars behind them to look right. You'd mentioned adding another B for an A-B-B-A, but that's going to be too many engines to look right with a 6-car consist, so now you'll need to add more cars to get a more realistic look. It's your railroad, though, so if you want to run 4 engines with 2 cars, or whatever, that's up to you. Be aware that once you get just an A-B-A with six 15" cars, though, you're going to have a nearly 11 1/2 foot-long train, so unless you have a very large layout, having a train longer than that is probably not something that's going to work very well.
The Lionel set TedW pointed out above is what I'd suggest, if you're willing to take the time to look for it. The 4-car set is No. 15312, as shown, and there's also a matching 2-car add-on set of two sleeper cars, No. 29152. I have these cars to run behind my set of Lionel scale Warbonnets, and they look great together. (The prototype F-3s were pretty short engines, incidentally.) The classic Lionel F-3s are scale length as well, and the 15" aluminum passenger cars have been used with those engines on Lionel sets going back to the 50's.
The 15312 and 29152 sets were produced in 2004, so you'd need to find them in the secondary market, and while they do show up, it isn't all that often, so you'll need to be patient and monitor auction sites, etc. The 29152 is probably a little harder to find than the 15312, so if you see that by itself, don't hesitate to get it and find the 15312 later. These cars are the best of the best in 15" passenger cars. Really stunning in appearance with their reflective aluminum bodies. These were made with scale features, including diecast detailed sprung trucks, add-on detail parts like antennas, grab handles and roof vents, and have finished detailed painted interiors (even white toilet fixtures), and painted passenger figures. They're worth trying to find.
If you're in more of a hurry, there's the MTH set, and if you look on Ebay for Lionel or MTH Santa Fe passenger sets, you'll find quite a lot more sets to choose from. Lionel made a number of different Santa Fe 15" aluminum passenger sets in the past, although none have been as detailed as the 15312/29152 set.
Good luck in your search!
