MTH Southern Pacific Daylight Passenger Cars

I don't know exactly what you are referring to, but the main difference should be the lettering in the letter board, i.e. prior to 1946  it would be "SOUTHERN PACIFIC LINES", and post 1946 the letter board would reflect "SOUTHERN PACIFIC". Thus, it depends on what era you desire to model.

For what it's worth, my local hobby shop has MTH SP Daylight cars, and the steam locomotive in stock. Contact Berwyn's Toys & Trains at (708) 484-4384 for further details. 

I remember researching these cars (before deciding to opt for aluminum Lionel or K-Line versions, which were catalogued and issued some years before) and seeing one of the 2013 sets you mention at a LHS.

All these are what I think of as fairly standard MTH ABS 70' passenger cars of recent years and the differences I am aware of are in the car numbers and in set 20-65217 being lettered "Southern Pacific Lines". Frankly although the ones I saw were well finished I didn't find anything really distinctive about them and I'd be surprised if there was any substantial difference other than the two I have noted.

Thanks for the reply,

The set I was originally looking for are the Lionel 6-29115 Aluminum set. I have found the tmcc dinner car and 2 pack but, have not been able to find the original 4-pack. that's what lead me to the MTH models.

Just received the 20-65216 and 20-65217. Same except for the car numbers. 3602 and 3603.

The 20-67239 is car #3604.

Joe

That set used to come up at auction from time to time. I never spotted one in time but I did find (at nearly full original price, unfortunately) the later Shasta Daylight 4 car set. That's aluminum as well, great interior detail although not totally prototypical. Overall more to my liking than the MTH versions.

The sets were catalogued as having different numbers for all the cars and one set (20-65217) lettered "Southern Pacific Lines" although otherwise I think that the baggage, coach and observation cars were the same.

I have the earlier Lionel SP Lines set including 6-29115. I purchased a two car MTH set to make a longer train but found the cars did not match the Lionel cars at all. They differ in height and width, the colors do not match and the aluminum stripes on the MTH cars are much wider. The MTH cars are nice in their own right but are not a good fit if you have Lionel cars. Best keep looking for the Lionel cars. 

Another plus for the Lionel cars is they have full width diaphragms while the MTH have the more common around the door diaphragms. The actual Daylight cars had full width color matched diaphragms.

Pete