If I had it to do over, I would not have fooled with Lionel Fastrack, it is cheap, and the pins break off if you look at them wrong. After looking in the last catalog, I don't know how anyone can get into this hobby. I too will be sticking with Atlas and MTH (as long as its out there) I wish Lionel would come back to America with its manufacturing, If I am going to pay 100 dollars a car, I would pay that for quality vs cheap. I am going to miss MTH dearly, as I collect all Scale products 1/48. I may just have to live with what I have collected for the last 20 years.
I am looking for the new stlye lionel trucks with the hidden uncoupling tabs. I would like to try just one or a pair of them just to compare with the new ones I have that have the disc couplers on them. I cant seem to find them on lionel parts wesight. anyone here have a part number for them?
With everything that has been said about these couplers, I decided to take a slightly different tack and look at how well they mate with both Lionel and other brands. I’ll designate them “2021” for now. I tested these couplers against Atlas O, MTH RailKing, MTH Premiere, K-Line, Weaver, and several different styles of Lionel. I tested the various combinations starting with both couplers open, then one closed and then the other closed.
The Atlas O, Weaver plastic truck, MTH RailKing, newer Lionel diecast with thumbtack, and Lionel Symington Wayne non-operating couplers all performed reliably. The MTH Premiere and K-Line couplers were in the middle, with at least one combination not functioning correctly. Other Lionel couplers were very problematic, with the Kinematic being the worst. I could bang the Kinematic car into the 2021 car as much and as hard as I wanted, and they still would not couple. If I lifted one and placed it into the other, the connection was hard and stiff. This resulted in the wheels of the 2021 car lifting off the track on an O-72 curve.
Other Lionel cars tested included an ore care from 2014 with plastic trucks, a flatcar with the newer diecast thumbtack equipped truck, and a hopper car with Standard “O” trucks which have been around since the late 1970s. I did not test any other MPC truck, nor anything newer than ~2018 from Lionel. I did not test passenger cars or engines.
Since I have a 3 pack of 2021 cars, I tested all of them. Some worked better than others, which leads to the conclusion that not all the couplers are made exactly the same. This explains why some people do not experience the problem while others do.
Next, I tried Rays suggestion of filing off selected areas of the 2021 coupler. From watching the repeated coupling failures, I determined the best chances of success would be to remove material from the outside of the coupler pin area (circle), and the inside or gullet area (arrow) of the knuckle. Material needs to be removed from both the coupler arm and the knuckle, in the area of the pin. It is best working on both areas with the knuckle closed. I used a flat diamond file on the outside, and a round diamond file on the gullet.
I removed material carefully and slowly, stopping often to test my work with the 2014 ore car and the Kinematic car.
This is one with enough material removed from the mentioned locations.
The 2014 car started working first. I did not want to remove too much material, so in some cases, I was unable to get the Kinematic car to behave reliably. When I did get the Kinematic to work, it still did not mate correctly.
Removing enough material to get the Kinematic to work did not affect the function of any of the other cars. They all worked reliably. I touched up the filed areas with a black sharpie.
Chris
LVHR
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Well, there you have it. An Excellent post by Lehighline.
Anybody still think these are imaginary or occasional problems?
Quality control means physically testing and checking your products as manufactured from your own line or from third parties, and rejecting the ones that don't work, instead of just assuming they are all fine and listing them in the newest Catalogue.
@RoyBoy posted:As I reported earlier, there is no continuity of design. The engineers and producers are different every time. It might even be a different factory every time.
Regardless of engineer/ designer. Lionel has reused tooling multitudes of times. The only things that really change are the electronics.
This truck/ coupler debacle is the result of a tooling change.
The trucks/couplers were the same design for at least a decade prior to this newer design with these issues.
No one seems to know what happened to the tooling for the "quality" sprung die-cast trucks with the hidden uncoupling tab and articulating coupler.
Maybe Lionel should try to "aquire" MTH's sprung trucks . They are a very similar design to the original ones Lionel was using.
@RickO posted:Regardless of engineer/ designer. Lionel has reused tooling multitudes of times. The only things that really change are the electronics.
This truck/ coupler debacle is the result of a tooling change.
The trucks/couplers were the same design for at least a decade prior to this newer design with these issues.
No one seems to know what happened to the tooling for the "quality" sprung die-cast trucks with the hidden uncoupling tab and articulating coupler.
Maybe Lionel should try to "aquire" MTH's sprung trucks . They are a very similar design to the original ones Lionel was using.
In the 2021 catalog, Lionel still shows the "quality" designed trucks as a 2-pack for purchase. If they are still making it as an upgrade option, I really wish they would go back to using it on their rolling stock.
@Joe Fermani posted:In the 2021 catalog, Lionel still shows the "quality" designed trucks as a 2-pack for purchase. If they are still making it as an upgrade option, I really wish they would go back to using it on their rolling stock.
Watch people purchase those packs only to find that they suffer from the same design or the couplers don't work. I don't understand the need for them to change the entire design of the trucks and couplers. The only things that come to mind other than trying to cut corners is manufacturing shortages or new vendor. That sounds ridiculous but who the heck knows. After looking through the new catalog, I doubt I will purchase any rolling stock. My local train store has plenty of older Lionel cars as well as a very good supply of MTH & Atlas. I guess I will have to do that. I know I have bought a few cars here and there from MTH but have yet to buy some Atlas.
And there you have it. DaveNYC is a knowledgeable, long time Lionel customer, and he's had enough. He is not buying any more new Lionel rolling stock.
I own 2 cars with the new truck design. One is the new milk car with the hidden uncoupling tab. The other is a camera caboose with the ugly thumb tack. I tested both cars last night and found the caboose with the ugly thumb tack actually works to connect it to my existing fleet. In addition, the coupler is the same height as my other couplers. The coupler fits loosely into other trucks and will close fairly softly and with out issue when mating into other trucks. The new truck design with the hidden tab, droops badly and does not work with my existing fleet. It will not close and I almost have to really force it to fit with my existing fleet. So it would appear that the new truck design can work if you have the thumbtack version. The hidden tab version of the new trucks is a bust and does not work.
So far it looks like just the ones on the new milk cars are too tight. I wonder about the other new cars with the hidden tab design?
@Mannyrock posted:And there you have it. DaveNYC is a knowledgeable, long time Lionel customer, and he's had enough. He is not buying any more new Lionel rolling stock.
I watched a video last night which I posted on Gary's(superwarp1) milk car post. The video went into all of which we have seen already except for derailments like Gary had shown. In that video the poster had old and new milk cars together and couldn't slide them up off the tracks from each other. The cars were tightly stuck together with hardly any give but finally came apart.
Two of the new cars the poster had put together and they had no problem coupling, which Gary had also noted. The one other thing that the poster of the video noted was that a MTH car mated up easily like the two new milk cars. What was not shown in that video was if they would derail like the new and old milk cars did.
This really begs the question of would there be any other cars from other manufacturers that would mate up like the MTH car and the new milk car? Well, I say it is still unacceptable regardless if they do. The poster of the video indicated in his video was that he had wanted to have a unit train with all his Lionel milk cars. That is impossible with the new flawed design.
I myself have some old milk cars in my small collection and would definitely have tried to make a unit train like the poster. The bigger question which is what I was saying above is what are the rest of the new catalogs trucks and couplers design? Being that the O-Gauge semiscale stuff in the back of the new catalog appears to have diecast sprung trucks than the higher end O-Scale stuff. That to me really doesn't make a lick of sense. Usually the high end stuff would have those and the lower end would have solid trucks whether diecast or plastic. That to me is baffling.
@Randy_B posted:So far it looks like just the ones on the new milk cars are too tight. I wonder about the other new cars with the hidden tab design?
I have the six Friendship PS-1 boxcars. They have the hidden tab version of the new trucks. They will not go through an O72 S curve without derailing. I would assume this design is on all scale freight stock going forward. Caveat emptor.
Then I guess it's all of the new hidden tab trucks. I have three of the new 8k tank cars which I haven't tested yet but think I know the answer already. Lionel makes me long for the previous ugly thumbtacks - at least they work.
One thing after another. I guess it’s time for me to realize that I have enough engines and rolling stock for this lifetime. Very sad indeed.
I just received some of the 50' flatcars with 20' trailers from the 2020 catalog. Happy to report that they have the 'old' style trucks, with both hidden tabs and articulating couplers.
I believe the new stock cars still have the old ones too - buy with confidence. I wonder why they were spared?
@Randy_B posted:I believe the new stock cars still have the old ones too - buy with confidence. I wonder why they were spared?
Because the vision cars have an angle sensor. The mounting hole on one of the trucks is D shaped instead of round so that the sensor can be mounted to the top of a shaft inside the car.
Beer cars use the sheet metal sprung trucks too. I never tested the couplers because I just cut em off and put on kadees, but they didn’t look like the older couplers.
Im sure there’s a rhyme and reason for what’s getting what, probably the factory that makes them, but going forward it sounds like if you “gotta have” a lionel car you need to factor the cost of putting Atlas trucks on it.
Unfortunately, I believe I have a full consist of UP passenger cars for my Bush Funeral Train with this very issue. The couplers are pushed off to one side while traveling straight. But the good news is, they line up with each other.
Have#2026260 ANH Bush 8K tank car with the funky trucks. The car was made in Vietnam. Had to file the inside of the truck and the knuckle on the outside just to keep it from derailing on 072 curves. Not good what junk. Still hard to connect or disconnect with other Lionel cars. So think it is looking like the cars made in Vietnam are having the truck problems. Have other new Lionel cars made in China no problems.
I ended up rolling the dice on another milk car after returning the defective one to Trainworld (they made me eat the shipping...). I got another B&M from Charles Ro and it does not derail like the defective Trainworld car did. The couplers don't work with other Lionel cars but no surprise there. Also, one of the sideframes was bent up and had to be massaged back into place. Just happy the thing tracks properly and doesn't derail over every switch.
