I’m not sure if it will work to post pictures. If not, can I email the pictures to someone to post? Lionel couplers on one end and big Atlas kind of couplers on other end. There is a metal prong to one side and the knuckle has a spring holding it in place. The trucks look to be riveted in place. I can’t get them to flip 180 degrees as the Lionel knuckle hits the corner. The sides of these trucks are plastic.
I can’t get my photobucket account to work. Is there anyone that I can email the photos to?
Send them to me. feagles1@nc.rr.com Will post tomorrow as going to bed.
This is a scout type car.Lionel made a kit to convert the trucks for normal couplers.They told you to cut off the old scout type.If you turn the truck while adding a little down force the truck will swing around.It usually drags across the body,but this won’t hurt anything.
Ed
Yep, just a scout coupler conversion. very normal.
Boyd, I am personally unaware of this conversion part number. But I have put to use these Scout type trucks, and there are several paths you can take.
You can order a coupler base plate assembly with coupler (the type used on the postwar staple side trucks) which is #480-25 and has clips which you bend over the wheel axles. The Train Tender has this part listed on his web listing: http://www.ttender.com/partslist.html
You could also drill out the trucks from the body, and then do one of two things. You can use a Dremel with a grinding attachment and reshape the Scout “knuckle” so that you can use it with other types of couplers. You’ll also have to put a slight reshape bend in the metal part of the coupler. The only probelm with doing this, is that the plastic Scout knuckle is held onto the metal truck chassis via a rivet. This rivet is loose and has some play in it, so when you go to back up a long train, the play in that rivet can cause derailments at least on 027 curves.
You can also drill out the Scout coupler, and use metal snips to cut off the metal part of the coupler from the metal truck chassis. Then you can insert a dummy Lionel MPC coupler (the type used on the Kickapoo cars, Bobber Caboose, Industrial Switcher) into the slot where the fromer Scout coupler was using a screw through the hole where the rivet previously was.
I’ve done all of the above myself and all work. I’m just the kind of guy who hates to waste anything, including a Scout truck.
I have one of those, and they work great! I wanted the gondola number, and I wanted to use the magnetic couplers. The vertical plastic piece on the scout coupler is cut off because it was hanging on the switches. This plastic piece is there as a scout truck uncoupler mechanism. There is a manual uncoupler for the scout cars, but I have only seen these in pictures. If you want the scout couplers you can remove the bottom plate from the truck as mentioned above.
Here’s a picture of mine:
Kurt
I’ve heard the word “scout” before but am unfamiliar with it. I paid $10 for it at train show saturday as I was on a mission to buy a bunch of cheap light gondolas, flats and hopper cars for my new Porter. Does this car or the trucks have a value on ebay? As I would take the money and buy more gondolas.
Lionel introduced “Scout” trains at the bottom of the line in 1948, and one or two Scout sets were offered each year through 1952. They had small 2-4-2 locomotives (a couple of designs with several catalog numbers over the years), mostly with plastic-bodied motors that quickly gained a reputation for being unreliable and difficult to repair. Scout cars were newly designed (except for the caboose, which was a typical SP type), and the cars had special “Scout” trucks and couplers. The couplers did not mate with regular Lionel couplers – a “conversion coupler” (cat. no. 480-25) was offered in an envelope with an instruction sheet – 55 cents in the 1953 catalog. (These were installed on the gondola in question.)
Small 2-4-2 engines similar to the Scout engines were offered before 1948 and for many years after. (Even during the Scout period, 1948-52, there were 2-4-2s that were not Scouts – they were part of the regular O27 line.) Over the years, many train collectors and operators came to refer to any small Lionel 2-4-2 as a “Scout,” though technically most were not.
And the rolling stock – a boxcar, a gondola, and a small single-dome tank car – quickly appeared in the catalogs either with regular Lionel trucks and couplers, or with Scout trucks and standard knuckle couplers. Actual Scout cars were numbered in the 100X series, while cars with other trucks and/or couplers had numbers in the 60xx series – e.g., 6004, 6034, etc. – during the postwar era. After the sale to General Mills, Lionel continued to offer these cars, with later trucks and couplers, and numbers conforming to modern patterns.
I have a couple of these that I picked up at auction for a great price. I noticed one car had the Post-war knuckle coupler on one side and the “scout-type” on the other side. I elected to keep it this way as now, as long as I keep this particular car in between a group of standard coupler cars, or directly to the tender, I can hook scout cars to the other side. No reason to do a lot of conversions for cars I will only run on occasion.
Dennis