Favorite Personal Choice for Best Passenger Cars

I like that detailed Texas Special observation car! Well done!

I think I will chime in …  a lot has to do with price and availability as well.

K line 21" cars rank up there as my number 1, however I cannot see spending 200 to 300 a car. I may as well purchase GGD cars at that point.
Plus what is it with all the holes in the floors? I was lucky to find 6 of my favorite railroad set names but alas the GN has still eluded my search.

The Lionel Hiawatha cars from 2004 with the stream lined Atlantic are gorgeous and unmatched in my opinion.

Also the Southern Pacific 18" Daylight cars are great stand ins.

Atlas has my vote for the CZ. No manufacture has matched the details and looks of the cars... but try to run those on O72 with S curves and Elevations! AH!...


Now for the UP and Santa Fe. Lionel has made great new releases... the new Santa Fe cars are simply fantastic. Followed by the UP Excursion and Challenger cars.

The major downfall only being the spring action rubber band couplers that will not negotiate S curves w/o modifying or converting to Kadees.

Now did someone say MTH?! Yes my favorite are those 64' wood side passenger cars with the lighted roofs and interior details... the gold lace pin stripe lettering and truss rod frames are fantastic! They just scream turn of the century or early branch line passenger traffic.

The holes in the floors are one big giveaway that the model is based on K-Line parts. I have worked out that K-Line used just a couple of different plastic floors for all of their aluminum passenger cars and each had the same pre-formed holes so that any separately applied parts like seats, tables and partitions could be put in place depending on the individual type of car. However you even see them in baggage or RPO cars where there is relatively little interior detailing.

Many years ago Lionel published something in a catalog criticizing these floors as cheese graters, breadboards or something like that referring to all the holes and then a few years later started using the same parts themselves! Both my Texas Special and SP Shasta Daylight sets have these floors as well as all of my K-Line scale cars. 

In the TX Special Observation Car I pictured above I first tried to fill the holes and then gave up and used inkjet printed fabric for “carpets” and photo printed “wood” instead:





In the diner I replaced those floors completely with sheet plastic.

The GN cars are a kind of Holy Grail. I think Lionel released the Vista Dome and Full-length Dome as K-Line by Lionel but not any of the other cars.

BTW, which Lionel Santa Fe cars do you mean? I was not aware that there was anything particularly good about any recent Lionel releases apart from the UP Excursion cars.

Lionel made some great aluminum Passenger Cars as did MTH! I still say MTH PREMIER 18" Passenger cars are the best bang for the buck!!

Gary.

Among my favorite are the Long Island Rail Road passenger cars painted for the New York World’s Fair in 1964/1965.



Andy

I agree that those Santa Fe cars look good and the StationSounds dome is another version of what is probably Lionel's best passenger car operating feature ever = Legacy dining car sounds.

HOWEVER - and without trying to start a paint 'n plastic vs. metal war - I really don't think that Lionel's metallic finish does justice to the prototype. The anodized aluminum cars that Vern and I have are the best Santa Fe cars Lionel has produced, IMHO.

This did make me think that although we have mentioned various GGD/3rd Rail cars, nobody has posted any photos. These cars do rate a mention in the favorites stakes, starting with the one-off brass Santa Fe Great Dome done a couple of years back. If you have to use paint rather than plate or polished metal, this is how to do it:



More recent is the GGD Silver Meteor, which is also painted and although not a mirror finish is near enough reflective on the smooth surfaces:



And finally, the gold standard of GGD/3rd Rail passenger trains is the GM Train of Tomorrow:

That LIRR passenger car is stunning.