An absolute favorite in my collection is the uncataloged 9467 “Long box car”.
Note that it’s not called a “6464 type” on the enclosed Lionel blueprint.
I don’t always care about wether a piece is boxed or not but I love the MPC boxes with photos and/or line drawings of other catalog items on the back and long sides.
The car bears reporting marks for the store it came from: ASBX.
Which stands for Ak-Sar-Ben Hobbies originally of Omaha but then in operation in Tennessee. There was an order form in the box as well.
Ak-Sar-Ben was big into the N gauge parts market so it was a natural that there were N gauge World’s Fair sets produced as well. The order form is nice that it also tells you how many of each item were produced for Ak-Sar-Ben. Lionel made 2500 9467’s.
In more recent years I’ve seen both lettered and unlettered versions of the N scale cars offered by the gross on eBay. Apparently they weren’t a great seller. More recently I had the opportunity to bid on a full case of 12 MIB 9467’s and I wish I could have. But what I would rather do is assemble a train of standard Lionel rolling stock that represent things associated with Fair exhibits.
Stokeley Van Camp had an Appalachian culture exhibit. The best restaurant was the Stroh’s Haus and the Budweiser Clydesdales were there. The historic Louisville and Nashville Knoxville Union Station was restored for the Fair and contained many eateries and exhibits. (Today it’s a STEAM academy.). And of course Sun Oil sponsored the Sunsphere. Those corporations are well represented by products from the MPC era with the exception of one. However there is the Stokeley Van Camp Pork and Beans car from the postwar era.
While not the last World’s Fair in the United States, the Knoxville Fair was the last one to make money. The honor of “last” goes to the 1984 New Orleans World’s Fair which, amazingly, had both the Test Vehicle (space shuttle) Enterprise AND fully operational Southern Pacific GS4 Daylight #4449 running excursions! But the opening of EPCOT Center in 1982 doomed the American World’s Fair. Why go to New Orleans when there was a permanent World’s Fair in Orlando? Needless to say the New Orleans World’s Fair sadly went bankrupt in the middle of its run and no American city has seriously considered challenging Disney since.
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Nice engine house @palallin
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@pennytrains I think I had one of those Silver Mountain things when I was four. What is that?
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My World’s Fair shelf. Opposite the 9467 is an incomplete (it’s around here somewhere) Tony Stewart Searchlight car. It does the honors of carrying the Winross tractor trailer set. Which is my next to latest World’s Fair acquisition. I’ve had the bell and 2 mini beer steins plus the guidebook, a hidden Sunsphere charm still on it’s felt display and the framed postcard since 1982. More recently I requested and received the “Visit Knoxville” 40th Anniversary book and visitor’s guide in 2022.
Gone are the T-shirts, hats, pennants, ticket stubs and most other ephemera we collected on that trip. But there are family photos, postcards, super 8 silent movies and an Arcadia Publishing book on the Fair that told me a lot I didn’t know when I was 12. But most importantly I wish I had known the Lionel car existed in 1982! To be honest though at that time in my life I probably would have preferred the HO stuff.
Mom wasn’t terribly impressed with the Fair. After all she went to New York in 1964! Talk about competing with Disney! That Fair introduced the Carousel of Progress, Great Moments With Mr Lincoln and It’s A Small World among others! She was much more impressed the following year when we visited EPCOT Center for the first time. We had watched it being built on visits to Walt Disney World in 1979 and 1981.
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Ah! Now we’re talking about one of my favorite toys of all time! The Modern Toys Silver Mountain Express!
It’s a “Mystery Action” floor toy that runs on 3 D cell batteries.
The “Mystery Action” is accomplished by the little wheels ahead of the battery compartment that are mounted on a swiveling plate.
This allows the locomotive to move in any direction including reverse. The rear wheels under the cab are solely responsible for moving the “engineer” back and forth in the cab.
The cab includes this large red plastic piece that lights up somewhat ominously.
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That’s how I remember mine!
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The lithography is excellent and it’s just a gorgeous toy!
The Modern Toys MT logo is on the back of the cab which strangely has a door.
Expensive for 1970?
There are a lot of variations of this body design including the “Piston”, “New”, “Clang-Clang”, and “Silver Mountain Special” among other sometimes odd attempts to catch children’s attention. Possibly the best is the “Overland” version with an enclosed cab and somewhat more streamlined appearance.
I don’t remember which one came first, but either the Silver Mountain or a 45N gateman was my first purchase on eBay some 25+ years ago. My original Silver Mountain disappeared sometime in my pre teens and I wanted it back! I’m still trying to get the green Modern Toys “Western” loco we also had and for which I still have the red plastic cowcatcher! A working boxed example with metal wheels and missing it’s cowcatcher isn’t very common in my price range. 
PS the Silver Mountain also has an air whistle.
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Thanks! And to make things better I got it at a VERY good price at a local train show. The seller wanted only $100 and I didn’t argue!
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Somewhere in my storage, I have a black version of that engine. My Great Aunt Mildred had one just like yours, Becky, and I wanted one, but all she could find was the black version, which was just fine with me!
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Here’s my MPC MoPac/T&P set:
The engines:
(I have two powered and one dummy.)
Here’s the boxcars; one is operating:
Then comes the big covered hopper:
Here’s the T&P 9400-series boxcar. This one is bright enough but really to yellow for the T&P’s Swamp Holly Orange color:
Then, there is the little 027 stock car:
Bringing up the rear is the SP-style MoPac Caboose. As I understand it, this one is one among a very few that were lighted:
The Frisco, MoPac, and the T&P are my favorite RRs. Later iterations of Lionel more variety for these roads, but there is just so much satisfaction in the simple and reliable MPC trains.
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Great looking locos and cars.
Rich
I am not familiar with these. Is it like a postwar stock car or something else?
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I don’t know postwar well enough to tell you. It’s the size of the little Scout-type boxcar, Matt. Doors don’t open.
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Looks like a short series from 1982 to 1986 of 6 cars using the postwar cattle car body mold. They are the 7301 N&W, 7302 T&P, 7303 Erie, 7309 Southern, 7312 Western and Atlantic and the 7401 Chessie System.
Postwar yellow horse transport car and green outlaw car from the MPC James Gang Set.
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I took the time to snap pics of a couple of my MPC boxcars
While I don’t have many such pieces, one of my favorite sides of MPC collecting is early MPC cars, especially those from 1970 and perhaps early 1971, which were equipped with AAR trucks.
to that end, here are pictures of my three 9200 series boxcars (though I hope to collect more in time).
First up is my 9200 Illinois Central. It originally had plastic door guides, but they were damaged, with one completely missing along with one of the doors. I couldn’t get doors that were the correct orange shade, so I decided to give it black doors instead. I have posed it with the car that received the surviving orange door, a 6464-425 with a much brighter orange door than the usual color.
And here are some close-ups of the trucks- note the differences between the postwar (left) and mpc (right) versions of the AAR truck.
My other two 9200 series cars are decorated for the same road- the 9204 and 9214 Northern Pacific. I have original boxes for both! Though, being early MPC, they are the awful short boxes that require you to turn the trucks inwards to fit them inside. I believe they have the same “footprint” as later postwar 6464 boxes, though the graphics and window design are clearly new.
Here they are, outside the boxes.
I’m very fond of these cars. The green car looks right at home among my later postwar 6464 cars, with its unpainted green body, heat stamped lettering, and AAR trucks. I would have preferred a brown 9214 with AAR trucks, but the urge to get a ‘twin’ for my 9204 was too strong for me to resist when I came upon it. Maybe I’ll upgrade at a later time.
-El
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You may be right, Becky. I used to have an MPC version of the gunfight car, and I seem to remember that it was longer, but I don’t know that I trust my memory.
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Great looking boxcars. El!
I find it amusing that MPC decided the graphics were more important than the rivet count 
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Yes, it was an interesting choice. My guess is that it was a cost and time saving measure. If the rivet patterns needed to be adjusted or planned around for each new livery, that would add a lot more fuss to planning out new cars. Or, they could just make the entire car side flat, and never have to worry about it.
Of course, it doesn’t look nearly as nice as having the rivet columns, but I can see why MPC may have been motivated to change the tooling in this direction.
-El
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