@Keith L posted:Here's how Lionel explained the original changes to the truck design in 2016. Make of it what you will.
"Gentlemen,
Please let me take a moment and explain the change on these couplers, so everyone has the correct information from the "horse's mouth" as it were.
We have engineered a new scale truck which will be integrated on all Lionel scale cars moving forward.
This whole project of reengineering the trucks started with the acquisition of the Weaver tooling. Not being satisfied with the performance of the older Weaver die-cast trucks we needed a truck that would accommodate the new Lionscale cars as well as all existing Lionel scale cars. If you took the time to notice the thumbtack couplers in the images I certainly hope you took the time to notice the 2-rail conversion kits in the back of the catalog. These conversion kits are only applicable to the new scale trucks (the ones with the thumbtack in the images).
This truck uses an ABS bolster and 1 piece cast side frames (with separately applied springs). The level of detail is as good if not better than the existing truck side frames. The reason for the bolster being ABS is two fold;
1.) to prevent to need for a collector insulator when using a sprung collector on freight trucks (similar to the type we currently use on locomotives, to ensure a positive 100% of the time contact with the center rail)
2.) to allow for easy conversion to using scale couplers on 3-rail equipment and for converting to 2-rail. Yes, you read that correctly, 2-rail. (Lionel has never before offered a 2-rail conversion kit, so this is somewhat notable in the big scheme of things!)
The new scale truck design has 5 different length die-cast coupler armatures (same as our previous scale trucks had) which slide over a shoulder on the center of the bolster and also have a screw to firmly mount the coupler armature to the bolster. This design makes it very easy to remove the 3-rail coupler from the truck to mount a scale coupler to the car body, for those customers who wish to take that route.
The bolster also accommodates all the various accessories we have used on trucks over the last 20 years; hall effect sensors, axle straps, collectors, LED PCB's (for hot box accessory cars). The coupler armartures accommodate mechanical couplers as well as coil couplers.
There are a total of 4 bolsters to be used with these side frames
Lionel 3-rail cars
Lionel 2-rail conversion (comes with the 2-rail conversin kit)
Lionscale 3-rail cars
Lionscale 2-rail conversion (comes with the 2-rail conversion kit)Why so many bolsters? Because on Lionel scale cars the bolster is very close to the floor on the cars. On the Lionscale cars the bolster is a good distance away from the floor, so a one size fits all approach would simply not work. Then add in the 2-rail conversion and the ride height of the car needed to be lower than the ride height of 3-rail cars, hence we designed 4 different bolsters. Each of the 2-rail conversion kits; 50T and 70T will include 2 Lionel and 2 Lionscale 2-rail bolsters, so 1 kit will work with either product. Each 2-rail conversion kit includes 4 NMRA compliant 2-rail wheel and axle sets, the bolsters mentioned above, 4 axle straps (with 8 screws, as they are small and you will likely lose some installing the straps). There are 2 different kits as one has tapered axles for 50T journal box style side frames and the other has blunt end axles for 70T rotating bearing cap side frames (to keep the rotating bearing cap feature) (the 70T kit also includes some extra bearing caps in black). The end result is an NMRA compliant 2-rail truck that offers electrical pickup from all 8 wheels!
The design has been in the works for over 8 months and has been thoroughly tested on just about every 3-rail track system known to man as well as the 2-rail trucks (with electrical pickups). The design is solid and allows us to finally have a truly "standardized" scale truck system that uses interchangeable parts from a standard set of tools.
Now, cars that have a large distance between the bolster and the end of the car will continue to use our kinematic coupler system, which has always had the thumbtack hanging down from just below the coupler head!
I hope this helps clear the air on the truth about what we're doing and why you are seeing changes from what has been done in the past.
Thank you,
Mike
P.S. I will try to post some pics later today so you can "see" the improvements and changes that have been made to these new trucks.Thank you,
Mike Reagan"
Keith:
Thanks for posting.
Wow. Sometimes, we try so hard to convince others of the wisdom of our decisions that we accomplish exactly the opposite result. Unfortunately, that is the case here.
This explanation was extremely weak, totally unconvincing and missed the forest for the trees. It basically repeated and repackaged several times the same two arguments around attempting to accommodate the 2-rail folks and addressing the collector insulator issue, which appears to have been a very minor one. There was also a factual error in that the Ultra Line Weaver trucks and couplers were excellent and IMO should have been used for the LionScale cars. It's also strange that Lionel bought the Weaver tooling, and then decided not to use it. But irrespective of what Lionel ultimately decided to do with its LionScale line, which BTW appears to have essentially disappeared, there was no need to change the trucks and couplers on Lionel's scale line.
Most importantly, the explanation failed to recognize, much less address, the fact that Lionel was making a decision that disenfranchised the vast majority of Lionel's customer base.
Pat
