How To Add LEDs To Lionel MPC Passenger Cars 

Another fantastic idea! I was in HO the first 40 years in the Hobby, even though I started like most of us, with Lionel, in the early 70's. Well I'm spoiled by all the cool electronic gizmos in HO, and your videos are starting to show me that I don't have to spend Legacy money to get some cool effects!

Great video. The opening of these cars reminds me of opening clams!!!!! You give very good instructions. I have had since they were brand new, the Blue Comet and the Chicago and Alton sets. In just the few years between them, MPC made massive improvements in quality.

I am watching your video and have some pointers for you. The tabs on the upper part of the window are what holds the roof onto the car body. The protruding taps on the bottom of the window shell are there just to guide the window shell/roof into place. you do not have to replace the whole roller pick-up assembly in the truck. the roller is a separate item the just slips and catches into a slot on the spring of the pick-up. And after all my years of repairing these trucks and pick up assemblies I have never had one break due to the age of the plastic. All you have to do is put your screw driver between the end of the pick up assembly and truck side frame and the roller assembly will pop out. You do not have to remove any wheels. Wow - you found a new roller - good for you but you could have just replaced it without removing the wheels and assembly. You should also get a good wire stripper rather than that big pliars.. Have fun.

Great video, and the result is definitely better than my super cheap led install I did.

Thank you for the video and tips. I'm actually starting to upgrade my MPC passenger cars.

Thanks for your videos. Lots of fun projects here

Thanks Mike! I had to come back and revisit this tutorial because I just completed my Milwaukee Road set and the coach I bought wouldn't light up. I knew there was a trick to getting the roof off and by just fiddling with my car, it came off with no problems. Now to go back and review what parts you used to make your modifications. If that works, I'll do it to all the cars and I'll have a flicker free set.

Thanks, I am new to Lionel and have already changing the coach light to led in a similar manner, but using 16v 4700 caps. I know it is operating on the maximum side of current, (16v) but I am certain there would be a built in safety margin. Thanks for the tip on removing the roof, I had a terrible job getting them off, now I know.

When you rectify 18 VAC you can get up to 25 VDC depending on the capacitor and the load. I had been thinking of regulating with a 7812. I am glad your strip is tolerant of the operating range of track voltage.

When he mentioned the small 442 engine in the sets I have one of those in the Milwaukee Road Road name and all of the tenders were equipped with the mighty sound of steam. And it really didn't sound too bad rolling down the track and the faster you went the more it chugged and so the sound match the speed except if you were sitting still. Back in the day when stuff was still American made.

So simple, it's hard to mess up! After owning a newer version lionel locomotive which came with a lot setup off Ebay I purchased a while back, I found a nearly mint condition 8632 Locomotive made in the mid 1990's Of course they aren't even remotely close to the real world of their predecessor's in the lionel family tree, but they bare the branding I guess? With the modern style canned motors and circuit boards, I didn't know what I was in for when opening up the shells of both the whistle tender and the locomotive. They are relatively pretty simple, being a engineer in electric/mechanical systems for lab equipment, the boards are about as RadioShack as it comes and basically are nothing more than rectifying systems to convert AC to DC and the E units are basically a transistorized switching system for relay action and polarity reversing, for F-R. This was a bit of a surprise to see how simple it was kept, so now I know what components are used by Lionel to make a E unit without a actual mechanical relay for the whistle tenders I have a mission to work on here which involves another good little train I acquired from another lot dealing on Ebay. I was given a Marxist train to add to my collection, which was the first time ever laying my hands upon one before. The problem was with the little Marx 1666, plastic shelled loco was something broke it's shell upon impact with a little harder material than plastic! After doing some research on these things, I was able to find someone here on ScrewTube that was nice enough to share the valuable Marxist information on these trains. Originally I wasn't going to be bothered with this cheaper train until this guy mentioned something very cool about these trains! Yes Sir they're simple and crude looking which simple is good, crude yes......but this is something that you can use and enjoy, rather than feel guilty about using or handling Lol! So the information on these Marx Trains is this; The original 666 Locomotive and the modern version of the 666 is actually a mod.1666 that came with a plastic shell.... but whats awesome is the 1666 is identical to the internals of the original 666 Locomotives. Meaning if you have any broken plastic Marxist locomotives and you need a good little heavy beater train to pull your loads, you can simply acquire a older decent shell from a 666 made of metal and add the internals of your 1666 to the 666 and make yourself a better and heavier bodied loco that you can run all day long and not care much about wearing the wheels off the things as much! Lol. But the Marx didn't have whistle tenders from all I've heard so far? But a Lionel whistle tender has basically the identical flat bar connection and you can run a whistle tender behind your Marx locomotive if you prefer and or had one to spare that is? Going through my pile of parts, I found a almost new whistle assembly from a badly crushed Lionel I used for parts. But I didn't have any good E-units leftover. So I ventured to see how these modern Lionels ran their whistles which sound actually much better than the older E-unit versions being you aren't hearing the annoying buzzing of the E-unit relay action. All that's needed to make a analog version board 1" square ⬜ 2 caps 1 transistor 1 diode and 2 resistors. 4 wires 2 in and 2 out to your whistle unit. This makes it much easier to fit the whistle into the smaller Marx tender without the extra space required for the E-unit! If you wanted to get really fancy and space is your enemy? You can use surface mount components and take up hardly half the space of this 1995 board. But I just wanted to share this with the train community and have also been playing with the idea of using LEDs in certain situations in the AC world of O gauge, and wanted to see how simple it was to do? And believe me man Lol 2 components is all about it takes which I was surprised to see? I was thinking of it needing a voltage regulator as well to keep the voltage from spiking too much beyond 12VDC and burning out the LEDs with too much power? But if it works without a regulator, than that's even nicer to hear? Thanks for sharing your experience with this sort of conversion, I really appreciate the help.

Yea, the Music was right on, good job with the lighting maybe you could make the bords and people could just solder the bords onto the wires, FYI just a thought ...sure you would get paid other New Hobbies really don't have the knowhow or tools where you do, think about it.

Very informative thanks. I have the Chicago and Alton version of these passenger cars. Are LED replacement bulbs available rather than completely replacing the wiring with LED strips?

My pullman ca. 1993 had two screws holding the roof on. They used kapton tape for the wires. It had fallen loose.

I have a bunch of the Milwaukee Road cars and orange and I take them off and I painted the roof orange so the car is now solid Orange. The train looks so perfect behind one of my Union Pacific 202 Alco fa's in solid Orange. I also have a matching train in the refrigerator operating cars the orange ones with an orange caboose. Since the cars are lit up I wish they had diecast trucks because the power collector in the middle will break off sometimes.

Roof removal: Cut 4 plastic strips from butter cup lid, about 1/4" × 2". These are flexible enough to slip through window at retaining tab. Slip these strips at retaining tab so as a shoe horn past the retaining tab easily slips past the window. Slip in all 4 window tabs and remove roof. The inserted strips are all in place so no coordinated pressing is necessary because all "slip pasts" are in place. R

I love this vid, just got some of these cars and had NO idea how to take them apart, thought maybe there was a rivet with the trucks holding down the roof (made me worried they couldn't be taken apart without special skills, parts, and tools) - Speaking of special skills, I'm mechanical; but not delicate or intricate, don't think I'll be able to install the lights (could prob solder the wires, but the board and circuits I am a simpleton at). Wish there were more people who could work on these like you, would gladly drop off a few of these and have them worked on over an afternoon if there was a shop near me (feel like you could make a couple of dozen boards and have them at the ready, assembly line style), also why did they think cardboard was a good idea! They make that with the cereal box scrap?... because it's crap - Anyway, Thank You!

Helpful video. Where do you buy truck parts, like rollers and springs and stuff? Also what bridge rectifier and capacitors are you using and where did you get it from. Do you have a parts list?

Great video, thanks. Do have a link for where you bought the electrical parts?

Hello where did you purchase the plastic clips to wire the LED. I am about to refit a set of n scale. Those clips make for a very clean connection. 👌 Thank you for your time.

Do you know what couplers I can use on my marx post war rolling stock for replacement use

Boy I wish I could do that as I have several Lionel passenger cars of 17 years. I wonder do they make a led light bulb that small. I don’t mind the flicker just trying to conserve power usage for these cars as they sit on a riding with other cars running,

how would changing to 2 4700mfd 50v capacitors affect the car lighting and voltage?

Good lighting need diagram

How do you wire the led lighting

Bridge Rectifier. Is missing from. Description.

The roof was a bad design. I don't think there would be a problem with being able to pull up on a loose roof.

4700 MF capacitor? Where the hell did you get a 4700 megafarad capacitor, Area 51? 🤔

Have you ever put a led in the front of a k-line mp15? I have one and the bulb is trying to melt the shell on the engine is why I ask.

Your lights are just too bright! I lit up a RPO mail car (HO scale) by making my own pickups out of some thin copper sheets I salvaged from old computers. I used LED strips (approx. 12 :LED's per strip, a mini full wave bridge rectifier and a 3200uF capacitor and mounted it all in the roof of the coach. The LED strips have adhesive on the back of the strips; just remove the tape and stick 'em to the roof. I used bright white LED's and my wife said it didn't look right--too bright. So, I didn't have any other LED strips so I took it apart once again and used a orange magic marker and colored each LED and reassembled. Now it gives off a nice warm yellow glow. I then did the same for all my lighted coaches--out with the incandescent and in with the LED. My LED strips already have built in dropping resistors--just cut in groups of 3. Of course I had to change out all plastic wheel sets to metal. I spent nearly $400.00 changing out plastic wheel sets for metal and body mounted Kaydee couplers for approx. 100 pieces of rolling stock. I also do Lionel 027 but my real modeling is done in HO scale. W Rusty Lane K9POW in eastern Tennessee