One of my MPC favorites is this Erie diesel switcher. It was from my brother's original train set, but became mine after he lost interest in trains.
I also have the green Southern Crescent steam engine and passenger set from the MPC era. Don't have a picture of that one, though.
Robert
http://www.robertstrains.com/
Milwaukee Road SD-18. My favorite SD-18. Also the first SD-18. Great puller with little wobble.
Frisco U36B. Again, great color scheme.
FEC GP-9. Gorgeous paint scheme.
Great FARR Northern Berk. The most beautiful old school berk. Great runner.
Southern Pacific Trainmaster. Drop dead gorgeous paint scheme. Pulls stumps.
8215 NKP berkshire was a wedding present from my bride
8111 DT&I switcher came in my first Lionel trains set at age 5.
785 hudson
well, I don't know what else???
HAd an 8304 4-4-2 for a while...
1. Santa Fe GP-40. One impressive engine in the 1983 catalog.
2. FARR Santa Fe 2055-style hudson. Finally painted it for the Santa Fe, even with the wrong style tender. Mighty SOS!
3. Santa Fe SD-18. Same as previously mentioned. Nice graphics.
4. U-36's. New tooling. Something not seen much from MPC.
5. GP-7/9's. Kept those things alive didn't they? All new graphics and colors, and built for every budget. Even Williams reproduces them.
MPC put out some pretty good stuff, even though most believe otherwise. The higher end MPC stuff was of the same quality, if not better than, postwar Lionel. It was a little hit-and-miss sometimes, but thankfully MPC kept the Lionel name alive and helped bring it to where it is now.
They made a lot of what had been postwar 1950s so much of what they did was good and made PW parts available for repairs.
Two motor F3s
FM Trainmasters
A number of Berks and baby Hudsons
Scale Hudsons
N&W J
"IT's GOOD TO BE THE KING",by Mel Brooks
Charter Member- Tardis Train Crew (TTC) - Detroit3railers- Detroit Historical society Glancy Modular trains- Charter member BTTS
1. Santa Fe SD-40. Set the new standard for "Standard O". 3 axle trucks, MagneTraction, approaching scale dimensions/proportions. I only wish this one(like later SD's) had two motors. But it runs like a champ.
2. 8206 (2065/665 Type) NYC Hudson. Mighty SOS & Electronic Whistle... AND the first reappearance of Baldwin disc drivers since 1949! Mine runs smooth as silk - no wobble - & the traction tire gives it good "grunt".
3. 8030 IC GP-9. I longed for this loco after seeing a two-engine lash-up on the GarGraves factory layout in 1971. It was even better when it arrived - a first for Lionel(shared with the 8031 CN GP-7) Geeps - NUMBERED illuminated number boards!
4. Another vote for the B&O(& Canadian Pacific) F-3's. The smell of the first F's out of Hillside as they slid, brand new, out of that foam-lined box from Owen Upp was a real treat. The B&O ABA sits on the layout at the ready right now. If you pop the cab off after it's been running for a while & warmed up, you can still get a whiff of that Hillside aroma.
5. 8600 NYC Hudson from the Empire State Express. First re-issue of the 2046/646 Hudson did not disappoint - MagneTraction had returned to Lionel(with a silver boiler front)!
Honorable mention to (A)the ATSF & Long Island GP-20's w/ electronic horns - first re-tool into a new diesel model... (B)the Erie & Pennsylvania NW-2's with the return of the deluxe stamped metal frames(w/ plastic battery boxes/fuel tanks), decoration, Blomberg trucks, front & rear operating couplers, & 3-position e-units... and (C)the 8603(2055 type) C&O Hudson w/ turned Baldwin disc wheel rims, silver boiler front, & striped running boards.
Rob
My custom paint job and decaling from a B&O.
BTW: it has Electric RR TMCC, Cruise and Sound.
God bless TCA 05-58541 Benefactor Member of the NRA, Member of the American Legion, Retired Boss Hog of Roseyville , KC&D Qualified
"No childhood should be without a train!"
8215 NKP Berkshire - a modern remake of the 726 with the "right" tender.
8659 Rectifier - My first MPC loco.
8210 J. Lionel Cowen Hudson
8064 C & S F3
1. #8206 I'll add a vote - as mentioned smooth runner and, although primitive by todays electronic standards, that SOS is still going strong - there's also the fact that this was my first present to me after coming home from Uncle Sam's all expense paid "vacation" of unfriendly faraway places.
2. Ontario Northland SD-18 again smooth running and a great looking power/dummy set.
3. Farr Great Northern 4-8-4 -for the same reason as mentioned above
4. C&NW Trainmaster
5. PC GG-1 - ugly paint scheme but it will pull the plaster off the walls and it was easy to upgrade with a decent sound system. Also, I've had a lot of fun putting a mixed string of passenger cars behind this engine to simulate the transition period from
I agree with the sentiments in some of the other posts to this thread - MPC did make some very good equipment.
"U-36's. New tooling. Something not seen much from MPC."
I have to agree, I like the U-36B. Even though on the real railroads, the U-boats have mostly been retired, the loco still resembles the look and appearance of more modern Dash-type locomotives.
BUT, MPC actually did quite a bit of new tooling. Not everything was from scratch new product development. Some of it was modifications, but still requiring new dies to be made. Just going from memory here with no catalogs open in front of me, items I can think of are:
- Modification of the GEEP to make the GP-20, meaning a new set of dies and also the U-36B, even if both were only the upper shells going onto the GEEP chassis
- The SD-18. Totally new tooling, including the type C truck.
- Fast angle wheel sets. Totally new dies and still in use today. Fast angle wheel sets totally changed the way we run trains. Now long trains are possible on a toy train layout.
-The MAXI short 4-wheel box car with the doors that lifted upward
- All of the Kickapoo short 4-wheel cars, incl. a dump car, gondola and bobber caboose
- The operating lift bridge, and the Sand loader, both totally new and short-lived accessories but both still new tooling
- Revision/retooling of the 027 switch to what it still looks like today
- The Symington truck used on all MPC cars with plastic trucks (granted, I'd prefered the Timken verision, but it was still new tooling).
- The sprung die-cast truck, tooled by MPC and still in use today.
- The Hi-cube box car, still being offered today.
- The long auto-rack car, both 2-tier and the added 3-tier, both still being offered today.
- All the various building kits, including the snap bridge, yard shanty, wood shed, junction tower, freight platform, Rico Station and others.
- Quite a few various short steamers, mostly plastic including the Docksider.
- The mechanical and electronic sound of steam, though only the mechanical version required new tooling.
- Revision and new tooling to the standard 6464 box car which became the 9200, 9400 and 9700 series, including the new style door.
- Revision of the mechanical spring log dump car, with new tooling to add a dump tray to make a coal dumping car.
- The mechanical signals. Granted they were cheap and not reliable being weight operated, but still new tooling.
- Modification of the tooling to the short 11-inch streamlined passenger cars. Granted some would not call this an improvement, but obviously MPC retooled to increase profits and lower production tiime.
If I opened the MPC catalogs, I could probably easily find more. For the short time span of MPC/Fundimensions, there was actually a lot of new tooling being done. Some of it was cost-cutting like the revision made to the shorty 027 tank car to make it usable on the new plastic frame which was then also used on the shorty 027 plug-door box car. But there were certainly more new products introduced between 1970-1980 than there were in the previous decade of Lionel.
I really get SO ANNOYED when I hear the all too common reference of MPC being junk. Granted, there was more plastic being used. But even the cheap short steam locos, of which I have many, can all easily be modified and improved to both run better, but also look better. I have never posted a thread about how one of my "cheap junk" engines didn't work BECAUSE they have ALWAYS worked.
I personally have a 100% never fail rate with my MPC stuff. JUNK? I think not. I almost wish we could go back to the days of MPC.
And given the unblemished track record that I have had with my MPC stuff, I would dare say that it is far more accurate to call many of today's high end- super detailed trains absolute JUNK because of the commonly reported failure rates, DOA's out of the box, easily broken parts, lack of replacement parts and frequent repair rates. The Lionel service department was once available to call 5- days a week. It was only after the new electronics and new supposedly better trains were made, that the Lionel service department became swamped and hours were reduced for customer contact to just 3 afternoons. At one time the return rate was reportedly as high as 45%.
brianel, Agent 027
"Praise the Lord. I may not have everything I desire, but the Lord has come through for what I need."
brianel027 wrote:- Modification of the GEEP to make the GP-20, meaning a new set of dies
- Modification of the GEEP to make the GP-20, meaning a new set of dies
The GP-20 was created by the ingenious use of a removable plug in the GP-7 mold allowing a quick changeover when needed.
Virginian Railroad
Great idea for a follow up thread to the postwar.
I'm generally ignorant of the MPC era, don't have any reference books on it, and I haven't found a decent reference web site, but I did pick up 3 engines and about 30 cars from the era last year, sort of out of curiosity. So this thread is very informative!
I've tested the engines, which are single motor and they seem about equal in performanceto their postwar counterparts: to whit, a N&W SD24 (know that because it came with the box) (seems likable, but runs really hot - ie, I need to cut the voltage back), LIRR something, on a GEEP frame, (wish I had also bought the dummy), and a nicely colored PRR which looks like a GP9, with dummy. But I have to hook up the LIRR and the PRR to pull significant numbers of postwar cars (I know, I'm getting off topic, but I haven't seen MPC discussed in detail here since I joined).
The freight cars are a whole other discussion. I can report that while most of what I bought was obviously NIB, several cars had unrunable bent axles and other mfg defects.
runtime
Kooljock, thanks! How did I forget the Baby Madisons? I guess I needed to leave space for you to include something...
Yes, the 8304 is a great steam engine. A good beefy looking steamer that looks right at home on an 027 layout. Mine still runs just great and the ESOS still works too. My only quibble with the MPC steamers is I wish they had blackened the steel sides of the inner chassis motor assembly instead of leaving them in their natural silver color. Oh well. Small point.
Runtime, actually MPC has been discussed a great deal here over the years and some neat information has come out of it. I don't think any of us who actively run MPC stuff will say that it is perfect or without flaws. Cost cutting measures were obviously taken by the folks at Lionel during the years of MPC ownership. But that's no different that the original Lionel Corp. or Lionel under the umbrella of Richard Kughn, Wellspriing, or the current company... take a gander at the Target sets to see some obvious cost cutting.
The great thing about MPC is that it is easily fixed, with many parts being pretty much equal to many postwar parts. Repairs are not usually so complicated that they cannot be done by someone with a basic understanding of toy trains. Likewise, operational improvements can be easily made also. There are things I can't defend quality-wise about MPC, such as the plastic snap-in rivets used to hold trucks to low-end rolling stock. But on the other hand, these are very easily removed and then replaced with something like a blackened hex screw or truss screw and with a lock nut.
One thing that is agreed upon and that is that MPC had a very wide range of roadnames, especially on box cars, and that the paint/grpahics were a far improvement from the postwar years. Folks at MPC weren't dumb: when the failure of the 7 northeast rail lines brought about the creation of Conrail, the folks at MPC jumped right on that and issued GP locomotives in Erie Lackawanna, Jersey Central, Lehigh Valley, Penn Central and later in Reading. Plus a new Conrail loco was brought out at the very same time. Putting current road names on basic starter trains is still something the various successive owners of Lionel haven't totally grasped (the last Conrail starter set was 1993, CSX in 1992 and there has yet to ever be a BNSF or NS starter set).
In the original line up of 9200 series box cars between 1970-72 were such then current roads such as IC, PC, BN, GN with current up-to-date eye-catching paint schemes. Again, I sometimes think the management at MPC was smarter than given credit for. There are plenty of common popular roads covered by MPC that Lionel since has ignored.
As far as original in the box MPC cars coming with bent axles, I have never encountered that. But given that the packaging during the MPC years was not as complex, I have seen a good many folks place used cars back in their boxes to claim they are new. This was even more common years ago when prices on MPC were getting high. And much of that was more speculation than actual market demand.
Now those prices are down quite a bit due to the influx of new high end detailed scale kinds of trains. There's one area where I give TMCC, MTH/Mike Wolf and the other high-end new products some real thanks... it's helped to bring prices down on many other used MPC trains.
Kooljock1 wrote:Oh yeah, before I forget:#5: Seaboard Coast Line #1776: for many this was the Lionel icon of the 1970's. It's hard to believe the bicentennial was 32 years ago!Jon
Jon........interesting choice that got my attention, seems like no one posts on this U36B engine, only some of the hard to get cars from the Bicentennial set. When I first joined this Forum I noted that as a themed set or stand alone engine I thought the 1776 offered something different at a reasonable price. Maybe not a lot of the posters have one.
Jack
IF IT WON'T COME LOOSE BY TAPPING ON IT, DON'T TRY TO FORCE IT. USE A BIGGER HAMMER.
brianel027 wrote: Kooljock, thanks! How did I forget the Baby Madisons? I guess I needed to leave space for you to include something... Yes, the 8304 is a great steam engine. A good beefy looking steamer that looks right at home on an 027 layout. Mine still runs just great and the ESOS still works too. My only quibble with the MPC steamers is I wish they had blackened the steel sides of the inner chassis motor assembly instead of leaving them in their natural silver color. Oh well. Small point.Runtime, actually MPC has been discussed a great deal here over the years and some neat information has come out of it. I don't think any of us who actively run MPC stuff will say that it is perfect or without flaws. Cost cutting measures were obviously taken by the folks at Lionel during the years of MPC ownership. But that's no different that the original Lionel Corp. or Lionel under the umbrella of Richard Kughn, Wellspriing, or the current company... take a gander at the Target sets to see some obvious cost cutting.The great thing about MPC is that it is easily fixed, with many parts being pretty much equal to many postwar parts. Repairs are not usually so complicated that they cannot be done by someone with a basic understanding of toy trains. Likewise, operational improvements can be easily made also. There are things I can't defend quality-wise about MPC, such as the plastic snap-in rivets used to hold trucks to low-end rolling stock. But on the other hand, these are very easily removed and then replaced with something like a blackened hex screw or truss screw and with a lock nut.One thing that is agreed upon and that is that MPC had a very wide range of roadnames, especially on box cars, and that the paint/grpahics were a far improvement from the postwar years. Folks at MPC weren't dumb: when the failure of the 7 northeast rail lines brought about the creation of Conrail, the folks at MPC jumped right on that and issued GP locomotives in Erie Lackawanna, Jersey Central, Lehigh Valley, Penn Central and later in Reading. Plus a new Conrail loco was brought out at the very same time. Putting current road names on basic starter trains is still something the various successive owners of Lionel haven't totally grasped (the last Conrail starter set was 1993, CSX in 1992 and there has yet to ever be a BNSF or NS starter set).In the original line up of 9200 series box cars between 1970-72 were such then current roads such as IC, PC, BN, GN with current up-to-date eye-catching paint schemes. Again, I sometimes think the management at MPC was smarter than given credit for. There are plenty of common popular roads covered by MPC that Lionel since has ignored.As far as original in the box MPC cars coming with bent axles, I have never encountered that. But given that the packaging during the MPC years was not as complex, I have seen a good many folks place used cars back in their boxes to claim they are new. This was even more common years ago when prices on MPC were getting high. And much of that was more speculation than actual market demand.Now those prices are down quite a bit due to the influx of new high end detailed scale kinds of trains. There's one area where I give TMCC, MTH/Mike Wolf and the other high-end new products some real thanks... it's helped to bring prices down on many other used MPC trains.
Thanks Brianel...I'm pretty well convinced that those freights with bent axles were NIB, the wheels look like they never touched a rail, they're in the plastic sleve, the carton looked like I was the first to pry it open. I bought these from an extremely large collection which seemed to include everything ever made, postwar and MPC.
I know the thread is about engines, but what do folks think of the "standard O' rolling stock?
My choices are:
1) The N&W J from 1981. I can recall seeing the sneak preview 1981 catalog and being in awe
of that engine.
2) The JLC Hudson from 1982. Hey its a Hudson and also a Lionel theme.
3) The Santa Fe SD-40 from 1983. Large, hefty looking engine unlike anything made prior by MPC.
4) The U36B. One of the first new MPC diesels. Made in attractive versions like the 1776 Seaboard, GN Rocky Mountain Express (1977). Im partial to the 8755 Santa Fe in the colorful blue-yellow and silver scheme, it was my first large MPC engine.
5) The SD series locos. With large six wheel trucks these engines has a serious look to them.
My favorites the 8872 Santa Fe also also the Burlington Route engine from the 1981 Great Lakes Limited.
Its all about compromise, needle point axles allow long trains, but the couplers would often open under big loads (well except the fake ones) and the cars were light meaning they would come off the track on tight curves or when backing through switches. They added great graphics but removed all the rivet detail for the screening process. They used a lot of aluminum in the power trucks and drive wheels and then added the traction tires which are pretty good. The Geep power trucks were based off the late postwar alco and switcher power trucks with the sheet aluminum construction, and I am not a fan of them!! They used nylon brush plates which may not supposedly need lube, but they, in some cases, are not lasting well. I've seen many that were cracked and useless.
You all missed SOS, I think they must have read a TYCO catalog to get that!!
Junk , No way, but Top choice, probably not either. Best thing was they kept the company going when no one else wanted it!
MPC diesels are fine pulling no more than 8 or 12 light weight free rolling MPC cars with needle point axles. The zinc alloy wheel castings on MPC diesels are not always perfectly true and combined with traction tires, cause severe wheel hop when over stressed. 6 axle SD-18's, 28's, etc run and pull really well and don't suffer the wheel hop problem as badly as the 4 axle models. If cared for and ran properly, MPC diesels should last a lifetime. They do really well with Fastrack O36 curves and switches.
MPC has become cheap and plentiful as people have ditched it for the new smoother running trains with electronic feature. There are some real bargains with MPC out there if you shop around.
The MPC/Fundimensions era ended in 85/86 when Lionel tooling was sold to Kenner followed by Kughn. Yes, there are some bargains out there with early 90's stuff. Pullmore motors, powdered iron wheels, and magnetraction.
My two favorite MPC engines are two diesels that get a lot of use:
8950 Virginian Trainmaster: a beautiful, smooth-running piece that will easily pull a stump. It pulls as well as my postwar 2330 GG-1 and modern-era Postwar Celebration Wabash 2240 F-3's. I've upgraded mine with an MPC electronic horn.
8020 Santa Fe Alco-an often underrated engine that runs fast and smooth with little maintenance. I just had mine pulling a train of 10 heavy postwar cars today doubleheaded elephant style with a Postwar Rock Island 231 Alco A. They looked great together and sounded awesome zipping down the track.
FREDDO
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