I’ve been buying mostly scale cars for over a decade. What I don’t like is with the hi-rail lionel type trucks and wheels that make the car sit up higher and make it look like its jacked up 1 scale foot or more. I have some Weaver Ps-2 CD high side hopper cars and would love to have them sit lower.
I did a post yesterday with the opposite problem. I have a Weaver covered hopper with diecast trucks that sit too low, making the coupler and thumbtack too low. So far, it’s the only problem I’m having with the DC trucks. My others are fine. I want to try and shim it up some how but haven’t got there yet.
I have shimmed some passenger cars up very slightly, to get them through O27 switches by swinging over the switch machines instead of hitting them.
I’ve been converting my rolling stock to Kadee body mounted couplers. They need a decent radius curve and you lose the feature of them working with electromagnet uncouplers. But I believe the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. They will mate with every 3 rail coupler I’ve tried. You needn’t convert every car.
I’ve never liked the Weaver setup. The cars do sit high. By removing the coupler and just fastening the truck like the 2 rail version. The car will be noticeably lower. The holes are already in place for the body mounted Kadee’s. Part of the problem with the drooping coupler is the weight and length of the diecast version. It also isn’t self centering seeing it pivots with the truck and both the truck and coupler share the same mounting bolt. It must be loose enough for the truck to pivot. Often times this looseness causes the coupler to droop. It’s more noticeable in the heavier die cast version. If the cars aren’t being used in switching service. The Kadee’s can be added to the Weaver cars and you can couple them to transitional cars on each end with standard 3 rail couplers.
Extremely oversized flanges and tight turning radii don’t help. The flanges on three rail cars would scale back to 6" on a real car vrs the 1"-1.5" inch flange found on real cars.