Milk Car 3472 and Floodlight tower 395

Welcome aboard. Because the milk car is so common I would suggest looking for the complete truck assembly.  I was able to solder a replacement wire to the shoe which fixed the tracking issue on my 50's milk car (first operating car I received from my dad). I gutted all the frayed wires and rewired my unit and it now works.  These older accessories are fun to work on and this past week I finally got my culvert loader and unloader working 95% of the time as well as the operating freight station. I just got the horse corral working in a manner of speaking (I have a dimple in the track within the plastic of the car that I did not notice as a kid in the 50's.)  I will be working on setting up the milk car this weekend if I am lucky. No clue on the flood light but it sounds like you are working in the right direction.  I personally would disassemble the unit, and start checking resistances starting with the bulbs working forward to the sockets, and continue the continuity check till you have the full unit working. 

Thanks. I’ve been scrolling through this forum off and on, picking up tips and suggestions, very impressed with the knowledge that is available. 

My local train/hobby shop knew what assembly I needed, he had two in stock or I should say did have two, now in my possession! He also had the correct wire for redoing the 2400 series passenger cars, would like to find a spool, I’m sure one of the sponsors has some. It’s the black super flex?? 22 gauge??

Next I need to adjust the freight station, several years ago on a trip out West, a train shop had original baggage cars with the figures and new “feet” . Figured at some point I would bring them out. The old cars hardly moved, the feet were worn flat!!

Interesting update regarding the floodlight tower. My local train/hobby store had a red  Celebration Series, still a 395 . 6-24214

The box shows the exact same tower as the green post war model. The difference? On the actual tower, all the bulbs are wired in parallel. There is no center post. A ground wire runs from the base up to the bottom of the area where the lights are mounted. No insulation under the bulb mounting brackets. You can see wires running down one of the tower legs on the box image, including lamps that are wired in series. Photoshop does amazing things.

I bought it,  much brighter than the original from the ‘50’s, the lamp heads appear to be the same, so this tells me my older model could be updated to parallel wiring, much more efficient. 

I will post photos later, someone on here has probably run into the same. Unless it was modified, then returned or exchanged, I doubt, it just looks too clean.

Forgot to add, the milk car is up and running, the new shoe assemblies and fresh wiring took care of the problem.