Lets take the Top 5 list to the MPC era (1970 - 1986).
B & O F-3 (8363/64/68)
These units made in Hillside, were the first better diesels made by MPC and paved the
way for the others that followed.
Santa Fe SD-18 (8872/73).
A significant upgrade to the GP-20 tooling complete with newly created die-cast 6 wheel trucks,
and die-cast side frames.
Chessie System Berkshire (8003).
The first Berk made during this era, with a beautiful paint scheme.
B & A Hudson (8606/784 on cab)
The 783 caused a buzz, but this handsome engine stole it’s thunder, and ran better.
NYC 0-4-0 Switcher (8516)
A personal favorite, this die-cast, upgraded switcher included the new electronic e-unit,
a back up light in the tender, and one of the best smoke units ever made by Lionel of any era.
Hometown Favorite: #8020 ATSF Alco. This engine gets little respect, but Lionel made and sold jillions of them, and most of them run still. My first one (from a '72 Sears special set) has hundreds of hours on it with one brush change and a new pair of traction tires. It still pulls every bit as well as it ever did and better than many other, costlier engines I’ve seen. Lock out the e-unit, and it will cruise slowly around the layout as smooth as melting butter. Unlike many, I prefer the sheet metal frame Alcos. If you want to collect variations, you can get several–open pilot and closed, different motor types and a dummy–and you can collect the matching 8021 B-unit, too. And then there’s the 8063/64 pair from a few years later and the blue warbonnet 8351.
Santa Fe GP-40. One impressive engine in the 1983 catalog.
FARR Santa Fe 2055-style hudson. Finally painted it for the Santa Fe, even with the wrong style tender. Mighty SOS!
Santa Fe SD-18. Same as previously mentioned. Nice graphics.
U-36’s. New tooling. Something not seen much from MPC.
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.
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.
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”.
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!
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.
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.
Burlington SD-28, 8151 - my personal favorite because it was first non post war piece I bought in 1981 after getting back into the toy train world after absence of many years. It is good puller and I love the paint scheme. Nice to see this thread - I think MPC unfairly has bad reputation. I have added other engines/rolling stock from that era and have not been disappointed.
#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.
Ontario Northland SD-18 again smooth running and a great looking power/dummy set.
Farr Great Northern 4-8-4 -for the same reason as mentioned above
C&NW Trainmaster
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 mechanica
Only MPC stuff I like is their 9700 series boxcars. Some nice paint and colors on them. I had a Little Joe electric and brand new out of the box I had to solder a bunch of wires together to get it running. I had the 3 GG-1s from MPC. They were pretty decent runners with magnetraction, but they were taxicabs (stripped) compared to the postwar GG-1s. Not even a battery-operated horn. I’ll take either the postwar or the modern stuff over the MPC era.
“If I opened the MPC catalogs, I could probably easily find more.”
My goodness! I can’t believe you left out Lionel/MPC’s most accomplished achievement: The Baby Madison Car tooling!
Think about it: in 1973 Lionel engineers newly tooled an entire fleet of passenger cars from scratch, that not only looked terrific by 1973 standards, but still blow much of what we see out of the water today.
Not only were these cars used by Lionel/MPC in their original configurations, but they were adaptable to many up-grades over the years, so that today we have the base-unit as found in the Polar Express, on up to the deluxe versions with overhead lighting, interior details and die-cast 6-wheel trucks.
I’d also add that these cars were artistically compressed as well as anything Lionel did in the Post War or Pre War eras, and look good with a variety of smaller steam as well as some non-steam power such as the New Haven and PRR Ep-5 electrics (See: Tom Cruise in Risky Business!).
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.
#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!
#4#8304 4-4-2 Steamer: head-end power for a ton of sets, this engine was the engine of THE set of the 1970’s: The Chesapeake Flyer.
#3#8101 Chicago & Alton Hudson: prettiest of the MPC steamers, this engine also pulled the prettiest of the MPC-era sets. It also was the only “Baby Hudson” equipped with a metal tender!
#2#8100 Norfolk & Western “J”: this is still the best looking of the “J” that Lionel has made. Gloss paint, beautiful consist too!
#1#8150 GG-1 Electric: again, the best decoration of any GG-1’s, either Post War or Modern Era. Yeah, there’s no horn, but that’s fixable. Prototype number too!