Thinking about populating my MTH Premier Amtrak Superliners

I have found mine on eBay and bought them in packs. The 1:50 scale people seem to fit the best. I use a hot glue gun and have at it. Take your time and create some fun scenes inside helps too. I have one baggage car with some crates and I did spend a little on a nicer scantily clad women with the boxes and an engineer just to have some fun. The looks on those who see it are priceless...

Are these car bodies difficult to remove for passenger instalation?

Nope, they're pretty easy to take apart.  While you have them apart for passengers, I recommend you consider upgrading the lighting to LED lighting as well.  The difference is well worth it, you drop the power to a small fraction of what the incandescent bulbs use, and the lighting is MUCH more evenly distributed.

I use the existing wiring and connection springs and just add the wiring, here's some pictures of the process below and the finished result.

You just remove the screws in the bottom of the car, then remove the screws under the floor assembly to drop the seats and floor out.  I typically can do the upgrade and seat around 15 passengers in about 20 minutes from start to finish.

John:

Thanks for the information.

Besides now planning to add passengers, I took your advice and ordered your LED lighting kit as well.

I am looking forward to the project.

I was wondering which supplier you use to order the seated people for the MTH passenger cars that you upgrade.

Thanks!

Stan

I used a mix of eBay 1:48 and 1:75 people to populate these MTH cars.

I look all over for my people.  I've used the Chinese ones from eBay, some similar ones from Amazon, the Lionel 21" passenger car people, and the GGD Little People.  I have some of the RMT BEEP people, but they're too large for most seats, but they work in observation cars with the lounge seats.

The cheap ones from the land of knockoffs are good and the right size but to make them great do a little painting on them!  Pastel colors don't look good in modern cars. 

I don't have a steady enough hand to paint them, so I use them mostly as is.

John:

Since the passenger cars I'm converting to LEDs are bi-level cars (MTH item number 20-6524), will I will be able to use your LED Lighting Kit for both rows of lights? I haven't opened up the car yet. I am waiting for the LED kit and the little people I ordered to arrive, so I'm not sure how and exactly where the current lights are installed.

Thanks!

Stan

Stan, you can still use it, but it's some additional work.  You cut the strip for the main section, then drop wires down to the lower level and use the left-over piece.  When I'm wiring these, I just measure out the amount of LED strip for each section and use the LED Lighting Regulator to power them.  It's cheaper since you have to solder anyway, the only reason for the full kit is to avoid soldering.  Other than the regulator, all you need is the LED strip, I buy the 5 meter rolls.

John:

Thanks! I will use the Kit for my first two cars, then order the LED Lighting Regulators for the rest.

Can you please recommend a source for the 5 meter LED roll(s) that you use.

Thanks!

Stan

I just look around on the Internet and try to find a good deal on a larger quantity, I typically order a dozen rolls at one shot.  I've gotten them as cheap as $2.40 a roll, typically they're in the $4-5 range.

5 Meter warm white LED strip for $3.99 and free shipping.

stangtrain posted:

I would like to finally add passengers to my MTH Amtrak Superliners and was wondering how others have gone about this:

What is a good source for seated passengers? I suppose not much detail is needed as they will be noticed but not really seen that well.

Are the Superliners hard to take apart to add passengers?

Thanks in advance for any help!

Stan

 

You need the Incredible Electromagnetic Shrinking Machine to use on the kids and neighbors to get a living model size population.

Bogie

John: Thanks for all of your guidance.

LED strip ordered and on it's way!

I'm looking forward to this nice project.

Progress update:

I purchased about 350 passengers which are all now sitting in my 6 car MTH Amtrak Premier Superliners as well as my 10 car MTH Rail King Union Pacific streamliners.

Hot glue worked great for seating the little people.

I bought the seated passengers from several sources, including the Chinese ones from eBay and Amazon. I also splurged for two packs (24 each) of Lionel's seated people for their 21" cars. Of course the Lionel guys cost 10 times what the others cost, so they got premium seats in the vista dome cars, etc.

Using John's LED lighting regulators and the LED strips he recommended, I converted all of the Rail King cars and they work great!

I discovered some soldering skills I didn't know I had while wiring the regulators.

Thanks again for all of the great advice and guidance I received here!

Stan

No pictures?

Great thread, I'm about ready to do this myself on my MTH cars.

GRJ, in your pictures it appears you laid down a foil tape strip beneath the LED strip. 
Is this necessary, and what was the purpose of it? (Or was it already there?)

I was also wondering how many use the bright white LEDs (5000K) in the kitchen section of their diners. My recollection from the 1960's-70's was that the kitchens had fluorescent lighting, so the bright white LEDs might look more realistic there.   Thanks...

There's no reason for foil tape, if it's there, I don't bother to take it out.  I've had a couple people request the bright white LED's for modern cars, and I also put yellow ones in heavyweights.  I have reels of all three types for upgrades I do.

STANGTRAIN, I recently installed some of GRJ's LED light kits into some premier passenger cars. To my surprise, the circuit boards fit perfectly into what may be a closet or something at the same end of the car as the wires that are coming off the two coil spring contacts. I soldered an MTH style socket onto GRJ's board so that the MTH contact wires plug's right into the board. John's kits are great.

  I purchased these cars used and they already had people in them of the perfect size for the seats. Wish I knew what scale they were and who made them. Does anyone here recognize these figures?

Those are great figures Dave, if you ever figure out who makes them, I'd love to get some of them.  These guys strike a responsive note, as I have one of these uniforms somewhere in a box in the closet!

Here are some shots of the newly arrived passengers and LED lighting in the MTH UP Rail King cars:

The "partial" Vista Dome car had no lighting in the "dome" the LED strip makes a huge difference IMO:

I'm sorry that I didn't take any "before" pictures to compare the lighting. The LED strips provide such a nice even light distribution in the cars. I may turn them down a bit, but for now they are all "full on":

Nice shots, the lighting in the dome really does make a huge difference in the look of the car.

This is really an awesome topic- I have 10 K-Line Superliners I want to convert. Very nice. John, I will be in touch on everything I need to do this change over.  Can't wait this looks so cool...