MPC might have taken some od the detail off the cars. But many of the liveries were great, and made up for that. In fact, so of the paint jobs were so great you did mind having less body detail. Better than ANY PW product. (2245 excepted!)
Originally Posted by Dominic Mazoch:
MPC might have taken some od the detail off the cars. But many of the liveries were great, and made up for that. In fact, so of the paint jobs were so great you did mind having less body detail. Better than ANY PW product. (2245 excepted!)
That's a good point. If you took, for example, the postwar 6464 B&A State of Maine boxcar and the MPC 9709 equivalent, you immediately notice the paint & graphics on the MPC car are much brighter & crisper compared to the postwar. The fact that the MPC car's side rivets are all but missing is not what first really leaps out at you.
they also seemed lighter in weight too, right?
Originally Posted by c. lee colbert:
they also seemed lighter in weight too, right?
Yes, in the case of the boxcars, mostly because of the plastic trucks versus the die-cast bar-end ones on the pre-1958 cars. If you swap out the plastic trucks with die-cast (either the postwar or the MPC-up types) then the weight is about the same.
Some boxcars like the Hi Cubes and some of the contemporary LTI/LLC 6464-derived boxcars have plastic frames which I think were limited to starter sets, but the majority of the "semi-scale" boxcars that derived from the 6464 boxcar tooling from MPC onward use sheet metal frames like the postwar ones did.
Originally Posted by John Korling:
Christopher,
Looks like some of those cars received truck upgrades, notably the PFE & ART reefers and the Hershey's 9041 w/ postwar bar end trucks, and your 9204 boxcar and a couple of others with Lionel's die cast bettendorf sprung trucks that I don't think originally came with. Also looks like your Ralston Purina quad hopper has the very early MPC carryover postwar AAR "Timken" trucks on it, again, never saw those cars come with anything except the Symington-Wayne trucks.
Correct John. I've switched out the trucks when I find a cheap frame at a show or on the bay. The Purina car came like that when I bought it at a Greenberg show a few years ago. I found it odd too, since the car was made well into the SW truck era. Don't mind though, as it looks better that way. I wish they would have kept the AAR trucks on the rolling stock
Originally Posted by Christopher2035:
Correct John. I've switched out the trucks when I find a cheap frame at a show or on the bay. The Purina car came like that when I bought it at a Greenberg show a few years ago. I found it odd too, since the car was made well into the SW truck era. Don't mind though, as it looks better that way. I wish they would have kept the AAR trucks on the rolling stock
I 100% agree that they should have retained the AAR trucks, or created a mold that reflected an actual 70 or 100-ton roller bearing truck, similar to those that LTI came out with that ultimately replaced the Symington-Wayne (Sometimes also referred to as Symington-Gould) XL trucks. I never really understood why they chose such an obscure truck design like those; I sometimes wonder that it was as simple as someone deciding to update the trucks on the Lionel models and just happened to come across a railroad journal or industry sales copy and saw that particular truck and said "How about that one?" 
Back to your Ralston-Purina car, definitely looks like the prior owner swapped the existing trucks out with those early MPC-era AAR trucks, maybe getting them along with the frames from one of the early MPC quad hoppers like the 9130. Definitely not stock for sure. 
I love the Milwaukee Special Atlantic 8305, those marker lights look great coming out of a tunnel.
The tender has its own pickup roller so the whistle still works when you unplug the tether to disable the Mighty Sound of Steam. There are two rheostats in the tender that allow you tweak the electronic whistle this allows you to run two of the same tenders on a display each with a distinctly different sounding whistle.
I swapped out the Southern Crescent tender with a Milwaukee Tender so both have a whistle now.
The Milwaukee Special does have those finicky fixed couplers that make it difficult to keep the cars together at times. But I like to live dangerously and still run it on the top tier of our display; without staples in the couplers to hold it together.
Originally Posted by KRA:
Here is an example of one of the earlier 4-4-2 atlantics with the die cast trailing truck and the original boiler front. SOME of the 8142, and ALL of the 8305 engines came with the newly created electronic whistle (the 8206 also had this feature). The whistle did not play well with the Mighty Sound of Steam, and it was dropped until a revamped version came out with the Chessie berk in 1980. That said the whistles in my 8142 and 8305 continue to work long after the MSOS boards gave up the ghost.
Another great MPC era steam engine is the 8600 from 1976. This was the first MPC era engine to feature magnetraction. This engine was made from the PW 646/2046 tooling, and the operating prototype was made in Hillside. It was fist considered for the Milwaukee Road passenger train in 1973, but the concern was that would have increased the set price too much. An often forgotten chapter in the early MPC years is that small section of the Hillside plant (50,000 sq/ft in the basement) was retained for the first 5 years, and some production was done there. Lenny Dean and his service/repair staff operated there until the lease was up in 1975.
Here is the 8305 with the newer boiler front, I like this better as it illuminates the marker lights.
Ken
The transitions between owners and manufacturing practices, etc., are always interesting. Here are a coupe of variations which took place at the end of the MPC era and the beginning of the Kuhn era (Modern era).
The Cannonball Express set came out at the very end of the MPC era. It was supposed to come with a black Pennsylvania flatcar, a Type II version with yellow fences. Early production, however, must have used up old Type I flatcar bodies (with individual stakes) in blue and yellow. These were probably old Republic Steel and Union Pacific bodies. (My black Pennsy flatcar has been modified to carry a load of chopsticks; I have seen the yellow variation but don’t own one.)
That set also had a reissue of the gray and maroon Erie-Lackawanna Scout boxcar, numbered 7925. Early production, however, used up some old orange boxcar shells; they were given white printing. These must have been sitting around the factory for some time, going back to the 9044 D&RGW or the 9040 Wheaties cars.
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