We gave our grandson a Lionel starter set for Christmas. One of the cars has a bad coupler on it so cannot be used in the train. I contacted a Lionel repair station and will take it there in the next few days. The coupler appears just fine. It opens and closes like it should but would not couple. I found that the knuckle, when closed, does not allow the mate to close behind it. Also will not allow the closed couplers to be able to manually drop a closed mate into it. In other words, the knuckle when closed and locked, is too far in. This is my first real experiance with Lionel since the 40’s-50’s metal ones. Anyhow, hope they will get it repaired for me. Will let you know how I make out in a few days. Ken
The only time I have seen that is on a few 1970’s era cars (with plastic couplers) that were probably banged together to hard and mashed the knuckle in. Probably easy to replace the knuckle but if its new you shouldn’t have to.