Anyone have the Lionel Early Era Inspection cars?

You can't remove the front truck on the early inspection car, it's part of the basic car. 

 

I converted one of the Lionel 6-18423 Step Vans to TMCC, those front/rear wheels do come off with no issues running the car.  It runs pretty well though my Fastrack switches without the pilot wheels.

 

 

Here's a Lionel van that's already a TMCC unit: Lionel 6-22510

My understanding is that these are modeled after the Western Maryland Buick inspection car now at the B&O Museum. That car has the double wheelset in front. I've seen several old rail truck with this feature.

Yeah, I've seen that at the museum and this seems to be a very true to prototype scale model of it.  It is an attractive car on the superstreets, too.  If you model the early '50s, like I do, if fits right in.

The Buick at the museum is from 1937 and I thought Lionel made a darn good copy of it.  I only have the Christmas one and it has run OK so far.

I added working taillights and a strobe to mine.  Anything that small on the rails needs a strobe, right?

Thanks very much for the detailed modification, Lee, and thanks John on the tips for the older Lionel vehicle.

 

I am surprised Lionel didn't have more success with Superstreets and vehicles. I would have thought command control vehicles would have been more popular. I think kids especially would love "driving" a vehicle around a layout, through crossings just in the nick of time of an approaching train, and such.

I think they had tremendous success with them.  My LHS said that they were one product line that turned over consistently and fast. 

 

My understanding is that Lionel had only a limited time under its agreement with Bachmann during which is would own the K-Line superstreets, etc., after which it reverted to Bachmann, who calls it EZStreets, and so far has offered only a limited number of vehciles, etc., without the marketing, product range width, and sales emphasis I think would a give it a critical mass and attention it needs (and deserves)in the marketplace.  No matter for me: I have over 40 SS vehciles, and 200 feet of track sequestered for my eventual needs, and anymore I scratch build most of my SS vehciles anyway: its not dying out on my layout. 

I'm guessing that Bachmann doesn't have TMCC capable SuperStreets vehicles either.