MTH Madison car lights

[BILLBOBBOY1]

I'm wondering if anyone has a set of MTH premier Madison cars manufactured in the mid-90s.  Recently, I purchased a new-in-the-box 5-car set made in 1994.  My set is the Southern Crescent road.  I also managed to find new the follow-on 2-car set made for the "15^th Anniversary catalog", prob in 1995.

 

In the case of my set, MTH changed horses in mid-stream.  The 5-car set has silhouette figures in the windows, with the light bulbs mounted on the chassis.  These cars light up like a Christmas tree.  I removed the car body to see how it was put together.  It looked very similar to a typical PW setup - rock solid.  The bulbs were at least as big as those PW Lionel bulbs used in switch controllers.  It appeared little could go wrong other than an occasional burned out bulb.

 

The cars from the follow-on set are quite different.  Instead of silhouettes, the windows are clear and the interior contains a plastic insert for seats and tables.  I have not yet tried to put scale sitting figures in there, but wonder if they would fit.  To accommodate this change, the lights were mounted on the top of the car bodies.  But instead of a rock solid configuration, a very fragile lighting set up was used.  While unpacking the two cars I heard the dreaded "loose parts" sound.  The light socket holders, made of plastic, had split opened and fallen out.  The bulbs are very small - grain of wheat(?) and configured like typical miniature Christmas tree lights.  After gluing the sockets together as best as I could, I put the 2 cars on the track with the other 5.  All the bulbs lit, but the illumination was pathetic.  So now, I have 5 cars that light up fine and 2 that I can't even tell they are lit unless I turn out the room lights.  In short, I don't have a good illumination match.

 

Has anyone else experienced this?  Is there a workable modification to improve the lighting on the two cars so they would look like they belong?

 

Bill