Lionel Premium Die Cast freight car Trucks with rotating caps. Die Cast Metal or Die Cast Plastic?

I believe the bolster is plastic, and the side frames are die-cast metal.

That is correct. The new bolster is now made out of plastic, a change that in my opinion is not a good change especially considering the cars are getting more expensive by the day.   The original improved truck with the new uncoupling tab that you push toward the car and its metal armature was "The Cats Meow"  and now they modified it so that the metal armature was replaced by this plastic bolster that screams cheap!   

Lionel's use of plastic bolsters and selling the product as having diecast is unacceptable. The prices soar and quality dives. Lionel also uses plastic journals on its Legacy PRR S-1. The S-1 I bought arrived with a journal broken and parts laying in the packaging.  I have since canceled thousands of dollars of Lionel pre-orders.  This cheap plastic bolster issue and my S-1 are the reason.  Lionel S-1 broken plastic journal on a brand new engine.  How well will plastic bolsters and journals hold up over time?

@VistaDomeScott posted:

Lionel's use of plastic bolsters and selling the product as having diecast is unacceptable. The prices soar and quality dives. Lionel also uses plastic journals on its Legacy PRR S-1. The S-1 I bought arrived with a journal broken and parts laying in the packaging.  I have since canceled thousands of dollars of Lionel pre-orders.  This cheap plastic bolster issue and my S-1 are the reason.  Lionel S-1 broken plastic journal on a brand new engine.  How well will plastic bolsters and journals hold up over time?

Lionel has been using plastic journals since at least the 1990s.  The very first scale release of the S2 (1990) had plastic journals for the tender diecast trucks.  All MPC plastic trucks are all plastic journals.  In all those years, I've never had a plastic journal wear out.  Nor have I read about plastic journals wearing out.

Joe

Point taken.  However, this very heavy S-1 brand new, upon opening had fractured plastic.  Not fun at $1,500.00. 

Back to Mountainrail's point, the partially plastic but advertised as diecast trucks are a negative.  Weaver plastic trucks have suffered breaks and failures due to aging brittle plastic.

I prefer Lionel use better materials on $90 freight cars and $1,500.00 locomotives.

Plastic journals may not wear out but they certainly break. Have had a few steam engine trailing trucks with broken journals.

Pete

@Norton posted:

Plastic journals may not wear out but they certainly break. Have had a few steam engine trailing trucks with broken journals.

Yep, I've gotten a number of "wheels loose" repairs where the plastic journal has broken in the trucks for engines and tenders.  Oddly, rolling stock seems mostly immune to broken journals for some reason.  The other issue I run across is identifying a replacement part to fix them!

@VistaDomeScott posted:

Joe

Point taken.  However, this very heavy S-1 brand new, upon opening had fractured plastic.  Not fun at $1,500.00.

Back to Mountainrail's point, the partially plastic but advertised as diecast trucks are a negative.  Weaver plastic trucks have suffered breaks and failures due to aging brittle plastic.

I prefer Lionel use better materials on $90 freight cars and $1,500.00 locomotives.

I feel your pain with the S1.  Mine came with a bent front axle.  Lionel had to send me out new wheels for the front truck.  Maybe the plastic is ok for rolling stock since its light compared to engines.  Maybe Lionel should use metal bearings for the engines.  If they did switch the bearings, I assume they have to get rid of the needle point axles.  Would that create more drag?  But since its only the leading and trailing trucks it should be ok?

@VistaDomeScott posted:

Joe

Point taken.  However, this very heavy S-1 brand new, upon opening had fractured plastic.  Not fun at $1,500.00.

Back to Mountainrail's point, the partially plastic but advertised as diecast trucks are a negative.  Weaver plastic trucks have suffered breaks and failures due to aging brittle plastic.

I prefer Lionel use better materials on $90 freight cars and $1,500.00 locomotives.

Lio

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Yep, I've gotten a number of "wheels loose" repairs where the plastic journal has broken in the trucks for engines and tenders.  Oddly, rolling stock seems mostly immune to broken journals for some reason.  The other issue I run across is identifying a replacement part to fix them!

I find this is more a shipping issue/packing than quality of product. Plastic can be much more versatile. Lionel should be more worried on how it’s packed than what’s packed.

Neither of the above problems are new, and they have both been discussed to death. The delrin bolster is to enable parts interchangability and the removal of the lobster claw for kadees.

The busted journals issue has gone on for almost 10 years. The Legacy Berks from 2013(???whatever run had the Rich Melvin 765) had this issue where the pony truck journals were knocked out in transit. Evidently its cheaper to mail new journals to people than to redesign the foam insert.

Search back on the forum, Mike Reagan explained the truck bolster.

https://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/...7#159096765425863277

Boilermaker1:

Thanks for your informative post, but like I had mentioned at the end of my post, I could not find anything on this topic and thus why I was asking in the forum. You mentioned that you have knowledge to the link that covers this previously discussed topic in detail very well.   Could you kindly search it for us as I am unable to find it and post the link for us?  Your posting of this link will be greatly appreciated as understanding on the details of why the trucks went from a sheet metal armature / bolster, to a delrin plastic bolster would be good to know.

Thanks and have a great weekend.

Rory

@MountainRail posted:

Have any of you guys noticed that on some of the new scale three rail cars the "Die Cast rotating bearing trucks" are really no longer "die cast"  I first noticed this on the new mill gondola and the 89 ft auto racks and now I have seen it on other cars like the 100 ton die cast hopper and the scale drop end gondolas.  I just find this kind of disheartening considering the cost of these cars are all over $70 dollars.  The previous trucks with the sheet metal armature / bolsters were awesome.  Now they have substituted the metal parts with some low cost plastic. Has anyone engaged Lionel on why they chose this and if they are going to go back to the premium trucks?   Its notable, that you can purchase the premium sheet metal armature / bolstered trucks, which is what I had to do with my Ferromex auto racks.  All previous 89 ft auto racks had the premium sheet metal bolster.  So I ended up paying $105 for each auto rack plus another $29 for the premium pair of trucks that used to be standard on the auto racks. By the time I was done, with shipping for car and the trucks I am in $150 a car.   

Are Lionel Die Cast Trucks, really die cast any more?  I guess you can say they are if you say that they are "Die Cast plastic"  I sure hope they reverse this decision.   If this topic has been posted before, excuse my inability to find it in the search.     

Rory

At about the 8:25 mark in his "Mega Unboxing" video, Eric says the Lionel Golden Beer cars has the new sprung trucks.

Are the new trucks actually sprung? The few cars I have with them are not really sprung, they just have springs installed in the side frames.

@BobbyD posted:

At about the 8:25 mark in his "Mega Unboxing" video, Eric says the Lionel Golden Beer cars has the new sprung trucks.

Are the new trucks actually sprung? The few cars I have with them are not really sprung, they just have springs installed in the side frames.

They’re not sprung. Eric was using the term loosely to indicate that the side frames have springs.