How to Convert Older MTH Madison Cars to full interiors?

Truthfully, I'd look for some later cars with full interiors and swap shells.  I suspect that gathering all that stuff and building them will be a lot more work and probably more money.  I regularly see a set of of Premier Madison cars in the $200 range.  The overhead lighting is easy, convert to LED lighting for around $12/car using my LED Lighting Regulator boards and strip LED lighting.

As a bonus, you could probably drop the shells on your old chassis and sell them to recover some of the money.

Jim, have you checked MTH for availability of the interior parts?  Their cost?  Will they fit your shells?

And, are the newer shells that have a direct swap for your older shells?

If it's a direct swap, and if the interiors will fit your shells, then cost and convenience are the choices.

In any event, adding LED strip lighting will be a BIG improvement even with the silhouette window strips.

I've been working on make my own interiors using styrene as a floor. 

I am with John. I don't know of any easy way to do this. You either have scratch build the interiors to save money or use interiors from later cars to save time.

Most of my heavyweight fleet is made up of MTH cars made just after they added interiors but without figures. I have been able find most all of them in the $30-40 range. You might be able to find 5 car sets of these in the $100-125 range at York.

Pete

I've bought 5 car sets with full interiors for as little as $125 in the past, and my threshold of pain is around $200 for a set.  If I "really" want it, I might go up 10-15% from the pain threshold, but that's about it.  I've scored some real bargains on cars that needed some work in the past.  Since I'm going to add LED lighting anyway, I don't worry about light functionality.

Thanks for all your help!!

Pingman posted:

Jim, have you checked MTH for availability of the interior parts?  Their cost?  Will they fit your shells?

 

Maybe Jon G might chime in but my experience is that MTH most likely does not stock them. I could be wrong.