Engine Upgrades

Yes it can as long as it has DC motors and a flywheel they can be upgraded

So there are some engines that have DC motors and some have AC motors with a rectifier.  How would I know which MTH engines have DC motors (short of removing the engine body from the chassis)?

I am pretty sure the only MTh engines with AC motors are tinplate   If its a diesel with locosounds etc its DC with a flywheel

Every MTH locomotive I've encountered to date uses can motors with flywheels. Steam locomotives have a large single can motor; diesels (with one exception I can think of) have two can motors -- one driving each truck, each with a flywheel. The exception is the Alco-General Electric-Ingersol-Rand box cab which has a single can motor w/flywheel, but it has Proto-2 already.

Modern Weaver diesels are configured similar to MTH (I upgraded a couple to Proto-2 a few years ago); most Williams now have flywheels, but I'm not sure if they're compatible with a Proto-2 upgrade kit. Some older Williams and Weaver had can motors, but no flywheels; some early Weaver locomotives used a horizontal motor without flywheels and a few of that series had flywheels, but they're not well suited to Proto-2 (plus there's no room for the boards.)

Atlas-O diesels, except for the switchers, have dual can motors and can be converted to Proto-2.

Many Lionel diesels have can motors and can also be converted, but it would probably be less expensive to add TMCC to them if they're TMCC-ready.

The running characteristics of converted non-MTH locomotives may not match those of converted MTH locomotives and factory DCS locomotives due to slight differences in gearing, wheel size, and flywheel size.

Hope this helps some.

OK... Now I got it!  Thanks to everyone for your replies!

I would imagine that the use of AC motors is probably unique to the Lionel Conventional Classics.

AF

I've never seen any of the MTH Tinplate with AC motors, the ones I've seen have all had can motors.

I've upgraded a few non-MTH locomotives with the PS/2 upgrade kit.  As others have said, the principal issue is a DC motor with a flywheel that you can mount the tach tape on, other than that, most anything that it'll fit in is fair game.

All MTH that I have seen use D.C. can motors.

Most of the Williams engines use D.C. can motors, except for the first run of Williams, they used the older style Lionel postwar motors.

Not sure about others but K-Line had a GG-1 semi scale engine(KCC collector's club) that was supposed to be TMCC ready and all it had was a TMCC cable plug-in. I was told it would take close to $200.00 to upgrade it to either TMCC or DCS, so I didn't do it.

Lee Fritz

I have that engine, it didn't really have anything to speak of.  The pantographs were wired so that it was easy to connect the antenna, that's about it!  There was nothing that helped with the TMCC installation, I gutted it to do the conversion!

I've only been exposed to the newer MTH tinplate, I didn't realize they had any AC motored versions.

Learn something every day.