I recently completed detailing one of my Lionel LIRR passenger cars The cars are based on actual LIRR cars I rode on between 1977 and 1990 However they are not scale models For example the real cars had platform doors at each end the Lionel cars do not The Lionel cars have a double lavatory at one end and a single one on the other The real cars only had a single in every other car However in spite of these liberties I am very happy with the cars I begin the detailing process by painting the seats dark green ( that is how I remember them ) the walls blue and I used a chrome pen to give the sinks a silver look ( even though it is unlikely they can be seen through the cars windows) Once the paint was dry it was time to add passengers If you look carefully at the attached photos you will notice that most of the figures are the cheaper Chinese figures to which I added some facial details with some artists extra fine pens or painted brown so as to have some African American figures These figures cost about $.17 each The smaller more detailed figures are from Lionel and fit the cars better but cost about$1.20 each I also installed a few standing figures especially at some of the sinks I then closed up the cars These cars were very easy to open just four screws and no tape to deal with I hope Lionel will add to this set by adding a bar car and a first class car with arm chairs as the LIRR 
had these cars on the Montauk Cannon ball The final photos let you compare the car I detailed vs a car just out of the box
