Continuing Saga of Lionel's poor new truck design

Regarding the METCA PRR and LIRR Milk Reefers, replacement couplers with improved performance will be available for no charge to our customers.  It will take some time until replacement couplers are available as a few sample couplers have to be made, the samples thoroughly tested (and tweaked if necessary), and then final couplers produced.  Once replacement couplers are at Lionel Customer Service, we will inform our METCA Milk Reefer customers of the process to request replacement couplers.

Lionel will be announcing their plan for handling their regularly cataloged milk reefers when they're ready to announce it.

Stu

Thanks for the up-date Stu:

Just one question......why does Lionel have to "re-invent the wheel" so to speak, and go through this whole process of having new couplers made, and then tested, before anything can be released????

From what I have been reading here, they had it "right" back in 2016. Seems obvious to me they just drag out the old pro-type coupler/truck, and re-make them again.

Am I missing something????

Peter.....Buco Australia (down under)

That's a very good question and there would be much rejoicing if they did. It doesn't seem to be an option for reasons only Lionel knows.

Fortunately I don't have any Lionel cars with this problem,..   Unfortunately there are a number of Lionel cars I intended on purchasing,.. but now will pass.     I'll skip and pursue MTH and Atlas cars.    And since Lionel has not been very forthcoming with information on this truck/coupler issue I wrote a snail mail letter to the president/CEO explaining why from now on I won't be purchasing ANY Lionel cars until the issue is resolved.

Lionel LLC
Attn: Howard Hitchcock
6301 Performance Drive
Concord, NC 28027

@Grampstrains posted:

Maybe it's because when the original milk cars were stuck in Romania, The dies for the trucks are also stuck there and they have to be re-made.

Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner.  ALL the tooling of the phase 1 milk reefers is gone.  Every bit of the 2020 phase 2 milk reefers is brand new.  There's no older tooling to reuse.

Stu

It might make sense for them to send a pair of new/ better designed trucks w/ couplers to customers who request them- maybe a customer sends in a phone pic.  Better than enriching FedEx for shipping both ways, plus the labor.

@Mike Wyatt posted:

It might make sense for them to send a pair of new/ better designed trucks w/ couplers to customers who request them- maybe a customer sends in a phone pic.  Better than enriching FedEx for shipping both ways, plus the labor.

There's nothing wrong with the Milk Reefer trucks.  The trucks are perfectly fine.  It's the couplers, and just the couplers, which don't consistently work as well as they could.

Please just give Lionel time to announce their plan.  I think most people will be pleased at how simple their plan will be.

Stu

@NOT LionelLLC posted:

Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner.  ALL the tooling of the phase 1 milk reefers is gone.  Every bit of the 2020 phase 2 milk reefers is brand new.  There's no older tooling to reuse.

Stu

That's all well and good. That still doesn't explain why the reefers, boxcars etc. have had crummy trucks for a few years now. These milk cars are just the latest disappointment.

The couplers on my new PS-1 boxcars do not align with other rolling stock (they are droopy), don’t couple, and the cars derail because the couplers pull each other off the track.  I don’t believe it’s a milk car issue nor do I believe it has anything to do with lost Romanian tooling. It’s a system wide cost saving change that has failed.

When they made new tooling to replace what was lost they still had the opportunity to make the previous design or similar. I wasn't really referring to the milk cars specifically but all of the other cars that changed since 2016.

I'm not pleased with the quality of the paint on the latest milk cars and 8k tank cars and will not be buying anything new going forward until I'm satisfied things are better. I didn't dare open the side door on my PRR milk car but it didn't matter anyways because a chunk of paint is already missing from one of the hinges.

I purchased two of the plug door reefers, and they have the same coupler issues described in this thread. I thought the defective couplers on the two reefers I received were an isolated problem so I got an RMA and sent them back for repair (I included a detailed letter outlining all of the problems I was experiencing). Lionel replaced the trucks and after testing them said they "worked good." The replacement trucks/couplers still do not work with existing Lionel products, so I am confused about them saying they "work good."

I am hopeful Lionel will offer a replacement coupler solution because these are good looking cars and I'd like to run them.

Like others I'm holding off buying any new Lionel equipment until the issue is satisfactorily resolved.

Stu,

I understand the position you are in.  However, I think that the biggest issue here is this:  In my opinion, Lionel was fully aware of everything that was wrong with these couplers, and yet still listed the cars in the catalogs and sold them.

How much do you like your new cars? If the answer is 'a lot', start looking for cheap Lionel scale reefers made from 2003-2016 and grab the trucks from those to use on your new cars. That's the best you can do.

I don't know how many of you have noticed, but the latest set of cars were made in Vietnam, not China. I'm not certain when the switch occurred, but my guess is that is when and why the new tooling was created and when the problems started. Getting tooling OUT of China is impossible, as they claim everything belongs to them, regardless of who creates or uses it.  Regardless of that, Lionel should have tested the product of the new tooling with previous products. They would have found the issue immediately, just like I did. All they had to do was test against their own product, not even other brands.

Chris

LVHR

"In my opinion, Lionel was fully aware of everything that was wrong with these couplers, and yet still listed the cars in the catalogs and sold them."

Or you could be wrong .  Stuff goes wrong despite people's best efforts. 

Well, wherever they were made could be irrelevant. It is difficult to determine if it really has any weight on that because as Lionel had pointed out on the Challengers, "it didn't say that in the catalog, but we understand that we didn't indicate what it would have, so we're offering to fix that to those who want that", or at least something relatively close to that statement. That was in regards to the chuffing sounds.

Someone pointed out somewhere over the past few years or so that there is wiggle room on their end when it comes to what is shown in the catalog and what the end result is. I have noted that in the most recent catalog "diecast sprung trucks with operating couplers" is absent from all or nearly all of the high-end cars(with maybe a few exceptions). The only place that appears is in the O-Gauge end of the catalog on certain types of rolling stock.

The other thing that it could be is they went over to different types of trucks to save money here and there, much like I pointed out that some of the passenger cars don't show or list passengers in them with few exceptions. Passengers can be placed in cars, that's not that big of a deal, and to quote Eric of Eric's trains, "I'm okay with them not putting passengers in the cars because you can always add them later, you can't add quality after the fact." I'm sort of butchering that a bit, but you all get the point if you haven't seen it.

I take pride in my well working rolling stock, and those that are very great quality. Stuff that rolls well and doesn't derail is essential to mostly all of us if not all as some have extremely large layouts where derailments become big issues. When I was into HO, I used to have a Burlington Northern hopper that would always uncouple and derail unless I had a certain boxcar coupled with it. I always ran that BN car directly behind my 2-10-4 PRR Texas and never had issues with that set up. Whenever I switched out cars and the locomotive for another, it would uncouple and sometimes derail. Granted that is HO, and at the time $5-$15 per car depending on what it was. These cars are not those naturally so we expect more out of them.

I sincerely hope that they come up with something that is easy for us on are end. We have to wait unfortunately until they figure out what they are going to do. In any case, sit and wait we have to do, unless we modify what we got.

@Dave NYC Hudson PRR K4 posted:

and to quote Eric of Eric's trains, "I'm okay with them not putting passengers in the cars because you can always add them later, you can't add quality after the fact."

And now you don't get either.

I have had zero problems to date with the couplers on my LI milk car and now operating  in the middle of a train with 6 cattle cars in front and six in back side with a caboose,, must be lucky! or it's not every one!

@RickO posted:

And now you don't get either.

Yup.

@dk122trains posted:

I have had zero problems to date with the couplers on my LI milk car and now operating  in the middle of a train with 6 cattle cars in front and six in back side with a caboose,, must be lucky! or it's not every one!

Guessing that you are just lucky Don.

Are you coupling them to slightly older LIONEL cars? There is no way that the "defective" design on the new cars made in Vietnam will couple with LIONEL cars as recent as 2016.

RAY