@irish rifle posted:This issue continues to be an albatross around Lionel's neck, and actually became considerably worse fairly recently when Lionel made a bizarre decision to migrate from articulated to fixed couplers. I stopped purchasing Lionel rolling stock a while back and either buy old-new Lionel rolling stock, or MTH or Atlas O rolling stock, both of which have excellent trucks and couplers.
While I'm sure we'd like this to be an albatross around Lionel's neck, in truth it doesn't seem to sink in. They continue year after year to build couplers that won't mate with other Lionel (or anything else), and they're still shipping product. Kinda' like the lousy trucks/couplers on Menard's boxcars, at least those are priced commensurate with the quality. 
