New S scale trucks shown in 2019 catalog

You might say there was a problem with the gauge of the original scale wheeled trucks.  Note the right side riding up on the guard rail:

The gauge is remedied by twisting on the wheelset to expand the gauge outward a little at a time on each side.  I did that some time ago and 2 pairs of correctly gauged trucks are residing in my parts box.  Unfortunately, there was still that too tall bolster. 

The bolster appears to be what Lionel has changed.  I don't see a reason for making any other changes to the truck, so I'm curious as to what this "...simplifies the conversion to scale wheels..." is.  And do they intend on selling scale wheels separately?  They don't have a part number in the catalog for them like they do for the SD70's.  You just can't plop in any old wheelset.

If all things being equal, it should be possible to just exchange the bolsters between the new hirail and old scale wheel versions.  If Lionel's made other changes, we'll just have to wait and see.

But, I'm not hung up on rotating end caps.  They're neat, but I can live without them and use AM or MTH trucks to convert to scale if necessary.

Rusty

The new trucks were explained on facebook live today. Lower bolsters to address ride height and will accept kadee couplers.

The first two runs accepted Kadee couplers just fine. 

In fact on the first "too tall" production run, Lionel included a spacer to bring the coupler height down to the correct height...

Rusty

yamaha226 posted:

The new trucks were explained on facebook live today. Lower bolsters to address ride height and will accept kadee couplers.

Which Facebook Page was that, surely not the AmericanFlyer/Lionel company page?

Bill in FtL

I went back and listened ,They said they will meet mnra standards for ride height with lower bolster , Easy to remove and tell old squiggly eyes you will not need to shim the new design truck to receive kadee couplers. A better truck all around as was highly recommended by a lot of people they said.

I'd like something a little more descriptive than "oodles." (I watched the Flyer segment, amazing how the remote craps out during it...)

I'm glad the truck got redesigned, and they mentioned that people wanted more prototypical paint jobs.

Anyways, I did a search of Lionel's parts site after trying several different parameters and finally located this:

Unless there's a separate part number for the wheels (oodles) themselves, us scale guys are apparently going to have to order the entire old truck to get the wheels (and regauge them.)  I'm not worried bout having to gauge the wheels, but don't really want to order parts I don't need.

Rusty

Right now, I don't have an immediate need, just laying groundwork.  My current cars are running around on AM trucks just fine. 

I've got two pairs of old scale-wheeled Flyer trucks in stock that I've already regauged.  Besides, we're probably not going to see these new cars until the end of the year or early next year anyway.

Still, I know the question's going to come up elsewhere eventually.  Frankly, I don't see Lionel having someone tearing down the old trucks to harvest the oodles of scale wheels.

Rusty