i spent my afternoon opening a few cases to inspect and dust off some lionel boxcars that have been in storage for 10+ years. some are postwar, but mostly they are modern with sprung trucks.
on almost every single one the knuckle spring is NG, no springy-ness left in it and they wont open when you pull the tabs down and some are stuck/frozen. there are a lot of them (30 or so Lionel 9801~9809 boxcars) that have die-cast trucks but a plastic knuckle and spring?!??[:(]
i doubt anyone has any suggestions or solutions but i thought i’d suggest to all to open the knuckles on your couplers before boxing them away for storage.
oh well…[xx(]
anybody selling trucks and truck parts cheap?
STORE YOUR TRAIN WITH THE COUPLERS OPEN!!![B)]