Pre war and post war trucks and couplers

The adapter Lionel produced to hook prewar and postwar cars together is the TT-100 and TS-162:

You may be confused by the Lionel 480-25 conversion coupler used to convert scout and coil couplers to to magnetic plate couplers. This is not for use with the pre-war trucks; As you have noticed, the axle spacing is not compatible.

The M30 designation you are seeing online on the auction site are 480-25 plates and is something the seller is using in the title for their internal purposes and not a Lionel Number.

Everything you wanted to know about postwar trucks and couplers:

http://www.olsenstoy.com/searchcd31.htm?itm=694

bMoran4:

RLS posted:

Do they make a magnetic plate coupler (480-25) that is compatible to the pre war truck ?  Or do I need to change out the entire truck and buy new ones

No, if there was, I would have pointed you in that direction ;-) You can do entire truck replacements, or build your self a transition car (post war truck one side, prewar the other). I've personally been satisfied the the TT-100 and TS-162 adapters.

So here's what my ingenious father did (many years ago).  Note that the critical "distance" is the small side flanges on the conversion unit.  They need to be cut fairly accurately so that there is no play.  The second cut (at the back of the circle is less critical in that you only need enough metal to wrap around (~180 deg) the axel.  For some reason he also cut away some of the metal on each side of the hole - perhaps to make it easier to bend.  This is the 480-25 conversion unit, and the one (reversed) in the picture is a spare one.  This has worked fine for 40~45 years that he ran them and has lasted an other 25 years (without much use).  Hope this helps anyone else.