What did MPC do differently?

Train Resource SD18

Yes that engine...thanks for the reminder.  These trucks must all be similar but different.  Ultimately they were all integrated motor trucks...but perhaps the SD40 had a slightly different shape than the smaller SD's.  But some SD40s used a sheet metal formed truck assembly and others didn't...also used on the 1998ish BNSF.  I am very vague on the details.  

I have always loved the look of the MPC SD40.

I have nothing of value to add to the discussion here as it is well beyond the scope of my knowledge, but I do want to thank everyone for all the good information thats been provided.  Very interesting topic to have read.  

"If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability."  --  Henry Ford

One of my early MPC favorites was the re-issue of the 2055, the 8206. I thought the electronic whistle was neat, I guess because it was something different than the postwar air whistle. I remember in my early teens looking for the elusive 8062 Great Northern 4-6-4 from 1970. Didn't find out till a few years later it was never produced.

 It was supposed have a whistle, before the electronic version was made. My guess is

it was a too ambishesh project for the time, and they didn't have enough left over postwar whistle units for the tender. The few they had on hand went into the scarce 2145 whistle shack in 1971.

A very interesting read.  Drop me a line if you'd like ours... 

The MPC decoration was amazing.  Pad printing, decals, hot stamping...even metallic foil stamping all on the same car.    MPC also had some great management in the early days and they had the complete attention of the upper mgmt at General Mills.  

What ever happened to John Brady.

This is a good piece too:  http://www.toytrainrevue.com/toteff.htm

  I get the feeling age, and location, played a large part in our individual perceptions.

 Hobby shops near us(South of Detroit) had little to offer in the way of starter sets, let alone a selection of new engines to choose from.

  The local Sears was the largest "dealer" here, had sets, individuals, and had repairs. MPC had a few years with all the sales room it could ever want, before Atari took that over. Returns skyrocketed in that time, eventually you could only return them to Lionel for repair, no more refunds, exchanges, or free service on new ones. And sales reduced to a 4x6 static end cap, with a clip board list, for all train items to be ordered from, no stock.

 Many LHS began to refuse you for service if locos got bought elsewhere too (which led to even more indifference on LHS survival)

 By about 78, the "super cheap" starter sets were the only thing I saw. Only at K-mart too (the very 1st one). Lower "kick" shelf, right next to 5+ year old, unsold MARX. The MARX sets were finally looking pretty good in comparison to Lionel now . The "bright" plastic sets, and cheap battery sets on the bottom. Tyco on top, with a working accessory display. (I remember "crowds" running to "blue light specials)

  Lionel was in Detroit now, there was really no excuse. And rumors we got "known junk runs" for easier repair shipping weren't helping either.

Despite my issues with the MPC era, I do run & bash them happily! They are cheap, and numerous...but I run them a bit differently out of concern, not reverence . 

  Three cheers for lightweight Heavyweights(Madisons). You cant pull many cast ones

 The GG-1's return was a reason to celebrate.

  The 0-4-0 dockside dc RI Porter(?) is one of my funnest, funniest, engines. After a rectifier and weight, its pull for its size is downright comical. I.e. great. I occasionally throw in on the tracks to help push a derail to reaching distance. It takes half the power of other trains to run like that. (but my 2037 still destroys it for fav.)

(how long it lasts, we shall see! But its got 6-7 years on it now).

Diesels dropped in quality long before MPC, but got worse (hard to imagine) before they seem to rebound later.

 I hated the brighter green B&N, and orange IC gondolas.

My favorite use of the "candy pallet" is the soda train; Coke, Tab, Fanta, Sprite.

And later(80s-90s), the Space themed, Loony tunes operating cars.

 Ted, I really cant recall the names, that day is a jumble. But they were 1950s (or earlier!?).

Ott, at least sounds very familiar for some reason. But researching the name didn't give me a search result of any kind to jar my memory more.

One, I want to say is a German name beginning with a W or V, (sounds like Wharten? Vaherten?, Vahurten? But may have been broken English for "War tin"**(marx?)  Great Grandpa was there that day, much conversation was spread between English, German, & French(Canadian). 

 I would say they all had a deeper tone than SOS, but not as loud. In fact they got drowned out easily by the FMTMs pairs & ABA sets. 2 got traded out because though neat, wouldn't be used at that volume. He kept the "American" tender. Later, we laughed at "the new" SOS hi-tech. They may have been two rail originally I'm thinking there was an "American", & that working, would have went right to the showcase. It seemed large too. 1:45-1:43? or a just a kid, looking at too much semi-scale, then seeing 1:48 as too large I cant say for sure. But "static chuff" predates SOS for sure.

 That's the best I can do today, without more hijacking. If any details do pop back to my memory, I'll try & remember to relay it. Its been a few years since I had even thought about them.

   I didn't really even know MARX had sound! What year did it start? I just watched some Youtube MARX side by side with SOS, Marx sounds deeper too [but not as deep as the earlier ones]. 

** The non-American, same brand, was used with a raised outside 3rd rail 4-6-4! I remember plugging the rod like, mini-banana plugs to tether into the loco, & the tender while on the test track with one alligator jumper on the locos power post.

Chuck, here's some interesting information on that 8062.

(MPC made up for it later with the beautiful 3100 Great Northern Berkshire! [photo below])

The First—No, Wait, Nevermind: #8062 Great Northern 4-6-4 (1970)

Photo courtesy of the Lionel, 1970

1970 was the first catalog of the MPC era. In it, Lionel catalogued a set headed by a 4-6-4 steam engine in Great Northern colors, numbered 8062. Apparently a reissue of the Postwar-Era 665, the 8062 was in the regular catalog but never made it to production.

Why? Two reasons are most likely. First, Lionel may not have received many orders for the set and decided it was not worth the effort to produce. The toy train business was still in the doldrums in 1970, and demand for a set of this size may not have been very large.

A second reason may have been that the 8062 was lost in the shuffle, in the midst of moving production from Lionel’s old plant in New Jersey to the new location in Michigan. The 8062 was by far the most complex item catalogued in 1970, and whereas other steam engines from 1970 were of a common design and shared many parts, the 8062 would have required an entirely separate production run for its dozens of unique parts and more complex assembly. Given all that was going on in 1970, it’s likely this interesting engine was simply squeezed out of the production timetable.

Lionel 3100 Great Northern Berkshire 

i rember seeing this very train in charlotte electric trains.I was buying cars for my 736 to pull.Nice colors but well at the time I wasn,t sure what to make of it.I was trying to get cars from different railroads.Like sf,sooline,gn,erie,c&o,wp,cp.I was trying to get the freightcars I saw as a kid.There was a tossieroll tankcar and a lifesaver tankcar.I came real closse to geting.Hey as a kid I really liked tossierolls and lifesaver candy.

A few more of the many MPC innovations and firsts: Chrome, baby. And factory weathering.

I love love love those weathered reefers. 

Jon

Thanks for the interesting info on the 8062 engine Breez.

Our neighbor across the field from us bought that Rocky Mountain set from us for their son sometime back in the early eighties. This past Christmas, I asked them if their son still had that set. They said, he sure does. That was a great set to break up and sell the pieces individually.

On page 3 I'll say again those who call MPC junk missed a lot. The pics tell a different story don't they? Heaps of good stuff came from Mt Clemens.

It's easy to get too serious about this stuff and get all caught up in the details and miss out on a lot of the fun. You look at things like the cops & robbers or the aquarium car and have to think the folks that designed that stuff had a lot of fun working that all out. It's like Blazing Saddles and Lawrence of Arabia - both great movies for different reasons but one of them certainly is a lot more fun.

What a great topic with a lot of interesting insight. It's time to dust off the old Scout set!

Here is my CP Service Station Set from the early 70's I bought recently, and my  JC Penny exclusive "Big Emma" Loco from the early 80's I won at auction last year. Out of my entire collector line MPC collection, these are 2 of my favorites...have many other favs ;-)

The MPC era was a time of phenomenal growth for the Lionel brand and ushering in the change from collector mentality to the operator mentality.

Rusty

 "Heaps of good stuff came from Mt Clemens." They should of never left. Just my opinion.

I've said it before in past similar threads, but one thing MPC/General Mills did differently that was definitely perplexing was the decision to use those totally obscure Symington-Wayne trucks for their freight cars starting around 1971 or thereabouts.  IMHO they should have retained the AAR trucks that they carried over briefly from the late postwar period, or did one of the much more common Barber or other modern roller bearing truck; think along the lines of the ASF ride control trucks that the LTI era introduced in the 1989 catalog and still in use today.   Needless to say I was glad to see those Symington trucks finally get phased out.

quote:

 IMHO they should have retained the AAR trucks that they carried over briefly from the late postwar period

I prefer the Postwar style AAR trucks too. There must have either been something wrong with the molds, or something wrong with the way MPC was using them. I have some of the AAR trucks that were made by MPC, the finish just doesn't look right. I don't have one at hand. From what I remember, the finish looked pebbly, or like some sort of solvent spilled on them.

They certainly could have made replacement AAR molds. According to my understanding, the reason for choosing the Symington-Wayne trucks is unknown.

Amen to that, John. The Symington-Wayne trucks were grim.

MPC did some modifications to the AAR molds to adapt them to the new (at the time) needlepoint bearing axles & "thumbtack" coupler armatures.  One other modification they did that's a bit curious is that they further filled in the simulated cavities (openings) on the truck sideframes.   I don't know if they did that because they felt the trucks needed a bit more re-inforcement when switching to delrin or what, but I suspect that those mods, or perhaps an issue with the injection process when they changed to delrin plastic, resulted in that roughened finish on the trucks in addition to the oxidization that typically is found on them.  The tooling for those trucks weren't particularly old at the time (slightly over 10 years) and tooling for plastic tends to last quite a long time compared to those that are designed for die-casting so I can't imagine it was due to the tooling being worn out.

Interestingly enough though, MPC also carried over the postwar plastic archbar trucks that were first used on the General set and similarly adapted them to use the new needlepoint axle design, but those trucks never did seem to suffer the same finish as the AAR trucks did so that would indicate MPC/General Mills certainly could have continued on with those AAR trucks by addressing those aforementioned problems.

I can only speculate that MPC felt that a newer, fresher approach to the plastic freight trucks was needed to further distinguish the new era of Lionel from the old, and someone just stumbled across the Symington trucks in a brochure, industry magazine, or something and just felt those would fit the bill, without any research performed to see how that truck was used and it's overall relevance in the prototype world.

MPC is another era in the long saga of Lionel, with its particularities etched in time, thereby creating another notch on the post. I like MPC.

As I recall, the reason was to offer "something different."

Rusty

quote:

MPC did some modifications to the AAR molds to adapt them to the new (at the time) needlepoint bearing axles & "thumbtack" coupler armatures. 

In addition to owning some cars with those trucks, I have some new, old stock unfinished truck castings. Mine are missing all the attached pieces: the armature, knuckle, and wheels. I thought I'd add the missing pieces, but that hasn't happened yet.

The first of the MPC plastic coupler armatures had a small rectangular bar glued to the bottom of the plunger. They came off rather easily, and are sometimes missing. I am not certain when they switched to using thumbtacks.

There was also a brief period after the rectangular metal bar where they used a flat-surfaced "thumbtack" before they finally went with the regular "rounded" thumbtacks. 

From what I've seen, the thumbtacks coincided with the introduction of the Symington trucks, which again I believe started coming out (at least shown in the catalogs) starting around 1971 or 1972.

Certainly no shortage of colorful graphics in these late 1970s / early 1980s sets at Carail.

That's a good point. I think I commented on another post that I just picked up a bunch of MPC stuff. MOst of the stuff had the boxes & I didn't pay more than 15$ per car.  For the high prices of today's traditional stuff, MPC is the answer. Quality cars & engines made in the USA 

The main thing Christopher is you are happy and satisfied with your MPC freight cars. That's all that counts. Run them, play with them and enjoy them.

You are 100% correct Jim!    I love them, the kids love them & that's what it is all about! Plus I like getting things I saw in the catalogs as a kid  

Mark I rember seeing this steam locomotive and asking my parents.For it for christmas I was told it was out out there price range.My mother friend name was emma.

Still have a Milwaukee Special set from 1973 that runs, smokes and has both SOS and a whistle! 

Smokes better than my JLC Challenger ever did! 

I think it was mentioned on another thread here...the MPC AAR trucks used briefly were a different tool than the worn PW AAR truck.  Upon close inspection they have a different "footprint."  I always though they were the same tool as well.  The PW AAR truck IMO is one of the best looking generic trucks out there.

Gotta love the MPC era colors.

These were recently added to my roster of MPC.  It's hard to argue with 3 NIB motorized units for under $250.  They helped satisfy an age old desire for a few of the iconic PW designs without the second mortgage.

Bruce

Bruce,

Please tell me what is the CP 8264 unit in the second photo.  I never saw anything like it.

Mark,

8264 was another variation of the army switcher first introduced in 1955....like the black switcher at the bottom of Joe's last picture. Like the #53 RG&W snow plow from 1957, MPC made a CP version in 1982.  One could amass quite the collection of these 2-4-2's by owning one of each variation throughout the years.

Bruce

hello servoguy.....

E-mail sent about cure for arthritis......

Tiffany

Mark Boyce,

That Canadian Pacific snow plow was on the cover of the 1982 collectors edition catalog.