Busted!

Wow! That's pretty scary.

Plastic truck?

Hello shawn........

Yes they are late postwar lionel "AAR" type plastic trucks and the couplers are plastic as well they were die-cast until about 1957 then lionel switched to all plastic trucks.

Tiffany

Thats a feature

Actually when I first saw the title to this thread I thought you were going to tell us that some of the train thieves who recently robbed train stores got busted.

Good luck with your truck. Let us know how you make out.

Ditto!

I had a truck fall apart like that after trying to glue a crack in the bolster with CA glue. I guess the CA glue reacted with the plastic.

Daniel,

I feel your pain. I had the same thing happen on two early postwar tenders. Namely numbers, 221W and a 6654.

I hope that you can find replacement parts.

Daniel,

   Pappy is right on the money, hope you can find the parts to repair her!

PCRR/Dave

I hope that you can replace that with a metal truck assembly. I do have a few items with plastic trucks, but I am definitely not a fan of plastic parts. I know stuff happens to metal too, still metal is my preference.

IMHO, if the engine and tender are in "minty" condition, I'd look for the correct truck. You really only need the plastic truck itself, with the riveted parts. You can reuse the other parts from the broken truck.

There are a number of variations on that tender, which engine/tender do you have?

I had an early set of Williams PRR scale Madison cars never run, but sat on the shelf for around 1o yrs.  I thought I better run them and enjoy them, well......ALL the trucks disintegrated when I touched them.  Needless to say I was not a happy camper.  I got no satisfaction from Williams by Bachman since it was before they bought Williams out.  Talking to a Williams dealer ( who has since passed away)  he said that in the beginning they were using inferior metal in the truck frames and it was known to happen.  I could have got new 6 wheel trucks for all the cars but I decided to sell them for $50.  Lost $225 on the deal.  I bought a set of K-Line cars to replace them.  Sometimes we don't know certain things are junk for a while.  I got over it hahahahah

Or another mis-adventure by Scott Smith..

Or another mis-adventure by Scott Smith..

That's what I was thinking.

Had some Williams Madisons years ago which developed the crumbling zinc problem

(due to impurities/other metals getting into the molten zinc, a subject often discussed here), but fortunately only 3 broke, and into large, stable pieces. I epoxied the offending

truck side frames back together and they have been fine ever since. This was 10 years ago, or so.

I sold the cars to a friend some years back (he was aware of their past) and they are still fine.

So, the "zinc pest", bad as it is, is not always a tragedy. It can be, but not in every case.

Another friend had some K-line passenger cars with crumbling trucks. I have had an occasional MTH zinc freight truck problem. And some 3rd Rail brass boxcar zinc trucks that

just evaporated, even the wheels.

But not much of it from anybody.

Yeah, crappy plastic trucks. I bought the tender with a post-war engine (which if memory serves was a 2065). The tender was pretty much low mileage and looks great. I will probably just install some 3-axle trucks, I have a pair that I needed an excuse to re-build.

I was assuming a husband caught sneaking in the house a major purchase...