Does anyone add detail to MPC freight cars?

I also grew up with MPC.  Those little Alcos are GREAT runners, just double-check for hardened grease before you run it.  I would love to help, but I've never painted anything in my life!  Some of the MPC sets had plastic wheels.  Installing metal fast-angle wheelsets will lower the center of gravity and help them track better.

I know that some of the MPC-era square cabooses such as Penn Central 6-9172 came with interior lights, so it can be done.  It's just a matter of identifying the parts.  Look at eBay auctions, etc., often folks sell miscellaneous lots of parts, or broken items which can be cannibalized.  Kind of the digital equivalent of checking the junk boxes under the tables at train meets!  Good luck in your quest and please share pictures, I can't wait to see some upgraded MPC!

Why not?? Add diecast sprung trucks and weight them to NRMA standards..  Maybe add Kadees, some weathering, should be as good as about anything out there unless you are a 'bean counter'....... Plus you're learning in the process!!!!

Concerning adding weight, You can put a "heavy" load on the flatcar, put weight under the containers on the gondola, and hide weight under a coal load in the hopper. Adding a light to the caboose is fairly easy. you can get a "light truck" from Lionel which will have the roller already on it. I would advise you that the caboose will glow in the dark unless you line the walls with something.

Aluminum foil tape will work nicely to hide light bleed through in cheaply made, thin plastic caboose bodies. I have taped the roofs of most of my MPC & LTI Bay Window cabooses, and have had very good results.

Insofar as freight cars; I have been buying MPC boxcars and adding sprung metal trucks for about six or seven years. Given what Lionel charges for a new boxcar these days, it’s a bargain to pick up an MPC boxcar with nice graphics and color for ten bucks, then add $25 sprung metal trucks. If need be, I’ll also add stick on wheel weights inside the car for additional weight.

Curt

Aside from adding weight to improve tracking I have added wooden floors to some flat cars.  I've used two methods, individual thin wood strips like coffee stirrers and photo-copying scribed wood sheeting onto adhesive labels and cutting to fit.

First is a corral flat car from a General set.  A black Sharpie colored the stanchions leaving the "wood" rails the original brown plastic.  I got the load at a train show, I think it's actually a tractor trailer load and the decking is the photocopy method.

Next up is a former searchlight car that came with nothing except the light bulb socket and a pair of corroded trucks.  I turned it into a crane tender for my MTH US Army Corps of Engineers crane.  I used stained stir sticks for the floor the tool boxes and fencing are Lego pieces and the end boards came from a K-Line rail carrier flat car.

Here's another one.  This was one of those really low end MPC crane cars that was in real bad shape.  Since I didn't need an extremely toy-like crane car I repurposed it into an 19th century woodside gondola.

I've changed out the plastic wheelsets for metal ones on a number of the typical train set contents for more reliable running. I had a short flat car that had a melt hole in the deck , so replaced the wheels, repainted the deck and added a pipe load to cover it up. These cars are so inexpensive so I don't have any qualms about modifying them as I see fit.

I'm not an MPC-era guy, and have little of it, but I have never seen why people love to bash the stuff so much. Some of it was pretty bad, and some of it was not. As with anything, pick your battles, and dress-up/detail/weather the heck out of the ones that work for you. Part of the fun can be doing something sharp that no one expects done to a "low-end" piece of equipment. Heck, I've even seen some MPC Pullmor locos run well and quietly, at least as well as that technology can do so.

I added the yellow reflector stripes to these 2 cars and I liked how they turned out. Not MPC but the results should be the same.

Marx deluxe caboose repainted with LED marker lights.  Frame is K-Line.  The Marx caboose is a Union Pacific CA-3; the prototype is preserved and in service at the Illinois Railway Museum.

Submarine car with a different submarine.   This one is a toy.  Had to modify the mounting bracket to get it to fit.

The 6464 (and MPC/LTI clones) boxcar uses the same shell as the 3424 (and MPC/LTI clone) operating brakeman boxcar.  So if you drill a hole in the right spot of the roof you can create different operating brakeman boxcars.

I am a two-railer and would normally not have a want for MPC-era stuff, but I recently acquired this (possibly MPC?) traditional depressed-center flat that someone two-railed:

Note that I since got another just for the missing brake wheels, now mine is complete. It still needs a little weight, those stick-on wheel weights installed in the matrix on the underframe will hide them just fine.

Note: I first thought that it was a Marx car when I saw the ebay listing and thought: "Who would two-rail a Marx car??"; when I got it I saw the LIONEL branding.

@juniata guy posted:

Insofar as freight cars; I have been buying MPC boxcars and adding sprung metal trucks for about six or seven years. Given what Lionel charges for a new boxcar these days, it’s a bargain to pick up an MPC boxcar with nice graphics and color for ten bucks, then add $25 sprung metal trucks. If need be, I’ll also add stick on wheel weights inside the car for additional weight.

Curt

I've done the same, but buy complete cars on the Bay that came with diecast sprung trucks for far less than the $25 cost of replacement ones. Then I just swap trucks. Sometimes I don't know what people are thinking selling cars for $12-$15 (or why more people don't scoop them up) when the trucks alone are worth $25, but that seems to be the market for selling the cars.

@Mark V. Spadaro posted:

Aluminum foil tape will work nicely to hide light bleed through in cheaply made, thin plastic caboose bodies. I have taped the roofs of most of my MPC & LTI Bay Window cabooses, and have had very good results.

I've used the tape, but most recently have just painted the interiors with black paint (using paint from a rattle can of Krylon paint, which dries very quickly) and a small brush. Doesn't take long at all.

These are a couple of cars I modified recently to add to my Rio Grande snow removal/track maintenance work train. I painted the deck of the flatcar for a wood look and added everything shown. Also added an additional decal and blackened out the Built by Lionel lettering. The tool car was a Santa Fe car. I painted the roof a contrasting gray and added decals (including the warning stripes on the ends) to turn it into a Rio Grande version.

@breezinup posted:

I've done the same, but buy complete cars on the Bay that came with diecast sprung trucks for far less than the $25 cost of replacement ones. Then I just swap trucks. Sometimes I don't know what people are thinking selling cars for $12-$15 (or why more people don't scoop them up) when the trucks alone are worth $25, but that seems to be the market for selling the cars.

I’ve done the same thing at TCA meets. I’ll particularly keep an eye out for the modern Lionel reproduction 6464 series boxcars and, if it’s one I’ve already got, I’ll buy the duplicate then swap the frame and trucks with an MPC boxcar.

I’ve found the 6464 reissues frequently available for as low as $25 each.

Curt