I have a few questions about MTH Milwaukee Road Passenger Cars

Yes, MTH hasn't made aluminum cars in many, many years Don. 

Have a few sets, early and late, look good and run well. 

One of the first and most important questions to ask, that you don't mention, is about color compatablity. You didn't say who made your Little Joe, but if it's a different manufacturer than the cars, you run the risk of mismatched colors, which can look pretty bad. 

I have two MTH Little Joes, thanks for asking. Don

As for people I go to a store on ebay, wehonest ( lol ) and buy there people who are sitting down, I usually go for the bag of them already color, you get like 50 of them, I normally have to amputate there feet to get them in there, then with model glue I attach them to the seats, ( there is really only like 5 or 6 different poses/color schemes but just the point of having someone at the windows to me is enough, most won't even notice there there is many duplicates. I have MTH passenger cars in NYC, PRR, B&O, & Southern.   

K-Line also made 18" aluminum cars, I have a set and they are beauties. They look great behind either my MTH or Weaver Little Joe's or any of my other Milwaukee Road engines for that matter.

I have two sets of the MTH and had one set of the Lionel aluminum’s.  I like the color of the MTH better. They are plastic. I would consider selling my extra set. You can email if you want to.  

All MTH Premier cars made after about 2003 have figures. The one in you picture has them. Of the 18" cars made since around 2007, they have the best detail IMO. Subsequent runs keep getting better. Current production has LED lighting. Best bang for the buck.

The main downside of MTH streamline cars is they are all based on ACF prototype. Sometimes that is correct, other times like SF or most NYC cars its not. 

Pete

What years did they do the gray tops? Thank you Don

scale rail posted:

What years did they do the gray tops? Thank you Don

I thought your question was a good one.  I am surprised that a Milwaukee fan has not stepped forward to help educate us humble ones without vast knowledge.  Now that's just mean.  I guess a trip to the library is in order.  FWIW, I haver the gray tops and like them a lot.  They match up nicely with my streamlined Hiawatha.

MTH has one of the best websites out there. Searching on Milwaukee Premier Passenger returns this:

https://mthtrains.com/search/M...3934&page_ak=0.3

Searching on Hiawatha Premier Passenger returns an abbreviated list:

https://mthtrains.com/search/H...lassification%3A7038

Pete

scale rail posted:

What years did they do the gray tops? Thank you Don

Don, the real cars? IIRC around 1950 the roofs became black as the passenger F units arrived and around 1957 when they took over for the C&NW the engines and cars would have begun getting UP colors.

scale rail posted:

Right now I run all K-line Milwaukee 15 inch metal passenger cars. The shorter cars are starting to look, well...short behind a scale Little Joe. I'm looking at MTH 18 inch cars now and have a few questions. Some have gray tops, some black. Are they all ABS plastic? The pictures I've seen don't have people in them. How is the detail. Overall how do you like them? My layout curves are 072 or more. Don't want to go with 21 inch cars. Thanks Don

That car has passengers in it (if you enlarge the photo they're in the dome and lower floor windows) and I have never seen a modern MTH passenger car (say, last 15 years) that does not have them. They are basically Railing figures and although sparsely placed are the best available for 3rail O. 

Color matching - well, that's a different ball of wax and justifiably causes concern. Generally MTH is better and maybe a lot better than Lionel at matching passenger cars to their own engines but that's no guarantee. I have MTH South Shore Little Joes and there's a slight discrepancy between them and the last issue of (non-prototypical) MTH South Shore Madisons but not enough to be noticeable. I put it down to applying the finish in one case to die cast metal and in the other ABS. If you are really finicky it's probably the Maroon stripe that really needs to match. 

Although I looked at the MTH Milwaukee Road cars in detail a while back I can't help on the roof colors. Again, however, MTH has been more consistent about rendering those than Lionel.