@Chuck Sartor posted:They dropped the separate handrails on the PE berks because children played with them and the fragile plastic stanchions were/are constantly breaking off as children picked them up. And there are several length's and are hard to replace. That's why the cast in handrails.
Chuck, are you sure they're plastic? I think they might be metal.
At any rate, it's not just children. I've broken those stanchions, and I don't handle my in any abusive or rough manner. Now those older style wire stanchions were much easier to replace. This newer type means you have to remove the entire handrail - hopefully without breaking any other stanchions - and get the broken end from out of the locomotive, which I have found usually means drilling it out. To me, these look like metal and not plastic. Either way, they still break fairly easily.
After trying to fix one, I now replace the newer style stanchions with the older bent wire type, whenever I break one as long as I have to pull the engine apart.
So personally I see the cast in handrails as an improvement. It's easy enough for me to paint the cast in type over dealing with the hassle of repairing the broken stanchions. Unless Lionel were to revert back to the older bent wire type of stanchion, but that's more labor intensive and the folded over part of the stanchion on the inside of the shell might interfere with all the added wires from all the electronics.
