How about some stations?
Here’s two versions of the same station. The first I built for my mom’s Christmas layout over 30 years ago (has it really been that long???). It is painted in my RR’s scheme of gray with white trim and green roofing.
The other is the same kit built by my wife just a couple year5s ago. It was the first kit she had ever put together herself. She liked the molded colors and hasn’t painted it. It resides now on her part of the layout as the station at Marmaros atop Roark Mountain:
A bit of an oddball and definitely more of a potentially gruesome subject than anything in the Lionel cataloged line. About as scary as Lionel got in those days was the Black Cave Flyer. But, it was March 1979 and the unthinkable was happening just outside Harrisburg Pennsylvania. How bad it really got wasn’t fully understood until long after the accident.
So a company named “Newbraugh Brothers Toys” of Berkeley Springs West Virginia came up with cars to commemorate this “first ever” event using (presumably) stock 6464 type boxcar bodies (I’ve heard of a tank car too) and parts purchased from Lionel and other manufacturers including a Standard Gauge #14 style boxcar from McCoy.
The car bears these stamped and embossed markings on the frame:
I have the HO version of this car. It was manufactured for Lionel in Taiwan by Kader, and like the O gauge car, decorated by PVP and marketed by Newbraugh Brothers.
I remember reading somewhere that there were only 100 of the HO car produced, I think the O gauge car was somewhere around 2-3 thousand.
My HO car came to me as just a shell and chassis (no doors, trucks, or trim parts). I would have ignored it if I hadn’t known it for what it was. I returned it to being a whole car again by salvaging parts from a donor Bachmann boxcar. The donor car had silver doors, but the TMI car is supposed to have red ones. Still deciding if I’ll repaint them or not. The box is correct, but was acquired seperately from the car. It is missing an insert.
Like the O gauge car, it is also marked with the NBT and PVP logos. The bottom of the HO car is molded plastic, so they couldnt put it there. Instead it was painted onto the weight inside the car. You can see them by peering in through the doors.
I posted about this car on the CTT forums before, under a thread titled ‘A Little TMI’.
I enjoy running my HO car with my 0805 Radioactive Waste cars. For better or for worse, Lionel did not reintroduce any of their postwar HO operating cars during the MPC era.
How about my switch tower guarding the junction at Notch and providing train orders for the subdivision? I removed it (and its equipment shed) from the layout for clarity:
And some right-of-way signs. I think there are two sets here plus a box in good shape. The back has some of those inspiring pics of other accessories you just need to buy!
And then a semaphore that operates (theoretically but not so well in practice) by the weight of the train plus two street lamps (some prior owner painted the posts a bright silver):
I had some things you guys have. The freight station in it’s as molded drabs of green, brown and tan. The watchman’s tower but I repainted it also. We also had an accessory set with plastic billboards, road signs, the barrel and lumber sheds and a layout planning book. Also the semaphore and I still have the lampposts but I painted them state set dark brown and added brass terminal posts to the bases.
Most importantly we had the drawbridge and the Sandy Andy gravel loader, neither of which we could get working properly.
I think I have posted this pic before, but I wanted to put it here, with the sky blue car for contrast. LaVoie and Solly list this car (pg 243) as variation (E), and call it “Deep Royal Blue” and “Very rare.” Assuming that their valuation (in 1991) remains constant–and I don’t–this is the most valuable car I own by a wide margin, even counting the later sacle cars.
Not bragging here: I’m just amazed at the way a rare piece might end up with a guy who’s not even looking for it. Heck, what did I know about collector value when I was 8 and Santa brought me the train for Christmas of '72? I still don’t care about the collector value: the value is in the love my grandfather had for me revealed in keeping me active with my electric trains.
There’s a family story behind the Pennsylvania Spirit of 76 Boxcar. According to my mom, my dad prepaid for the 7600 Spirit of 76 Frisco caboose at a local hobby shop. Returning to the store on Christmas Eve to pick it up, he found that the store has sold the item and refused to give him a cash refund. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, he, having been born there, selected the Pennsylvania car as a substitute for the lighted caboose he expected. Wether he ever shopped there again I can’t say. But I certainly did!
The mail car was another Christmas gift item and I do have the mail bags around here somewhere. The BN piggyback car is a 21st century purchase and it needs some parts. Namely the wheel chocks and one jack stand. I made a DIY jack out of dowels and I usually have the trailers (vans) hot glued to the car if I expect to run it.
Pallalin, while definitely not as collectable as the dark blue version, I would argue your “common as dirt” light blue 9011 is also a neat find to have, as it is the early version with AAR trucks. Trainz have an online “guide” series they host, one article of which discusses 9200 series boxcars and sheds some light on AAR truck use. According to the article, the 9200 series cars were produced with AAR trucks until some point in 1971 when the Symington Wayne truck emerged, that became the near-universal truck for the remainder of the MPC era, and beyond.
What’s interesting to me, is that I was trying to find pictures of train sets from Lionel 1970 and 1971, and noticed that all the 1970 sets seemed to have rolling stock with AAR trucks, but 1971 sets did not. I would be interested to know if a more comprehensive study has ever been done of MPC sets to confirm whether or not this is the case, but I have my suspicions that Lionel stopped putting AAR trucks on rolling stock destined for train sets, and perhaps was using up remaining AAR truck inventory on separate sale equipment like the 9200 series.
Welcome back to the Forum Pocono Jack!
We’re hoping more of the old crowd drifts in.
By the way, has anyone heard from Fifedog lately? I’d love to see him return!
OK, some more of my MPC’s, in fact this is really the rest of them and sorry if I’ve posted them before.
The “Spirit of '76 Series!”
Locomotive and caboose.
(OK, that NJ car’s a K-Line but it balances out the display shelves nicely!)
With the Semi-Quincentennial almost upon us (April 19th 2025 will be the 250th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord) my advice to anyone looking for one of these complete units grab one quickly. The current prices I’ve seen on complete units seem to run from $325 (what I paid for mine several years ago) to around $400. I wouldn’t be surprised if the prices go up as the Semi-Quin goes on.
Jeez! I have first-hand memories of the 1975-1976 Bicentennial years, I was 22 in 1975! Where do the years go?
Wow, El! I had no idea. I paid no attention whatever to the trucks. More desirable stuff right under my nose. The early history of MPC–Fundamensions–has some interesting twists, only a few of which I am aware of.
This thread has turned into a real learning experience for me.
