Regarding the Lionel 40ft flat car: I agree they are very nice. They have a lot of scale sized details, and the body is diecast. Not only is nicely weighted, it has a very realistic underframe.
I replaced the scribed sheet wood deck with board by board construction. Its very easy to do. I added kadees, and filled in the gap in the ends left by the lobster claw to give a more realistic appearance. Compare the following two photos:
And I added a coupld of EMD Flexicoil truck frames as a load:
The last photo was included because this is a scenery thread. Everyone should be very impressed on the realism of the trees.