In the current CTT, a reader asks about replacing the current four-wheel plastic trucks and couplers on his 1977 Southern Crescent Baby Madison cars with die-cast trucks and couplers.
The published answer instructs the reader to obtain sets of die-cast six-wheel trucks from a Lionel parts dealer.
I hope the reader see this before laying out the cash.
The pre-1978 Lionel Baby Madison Cars were designed for four-wheel trucks. The early ones came with plastic four-wheel “wood-beam” 19th Century passenger trucks with separately applied “dummy” couplers screwed directly into the car body. With the 1977 Southern Crescent cars, the dummy couplers were replaced by operating couplers mounted directly to the plastic four-wheel wood-beam trucks.
In 1978, Lionel cataloged the Jersey Central “Blue Comet” set. For this set, the cars were equipped with die-cast six-wheel passenger trucks. Lenny Dean and the marketing people at Lionel thought this was a great idea to make the Blue Comet release “special”. Problem was, the under-body tooling for the Baby Madison cars was never made to accommodate such a long truck, and the wheel sets banged into the heating and air conditioning units and battery boxes under the cars. Lionel tooling engineers had to re-tool the undersides of the Baby Madison cars for the Blue Comet and all following sets.
In short, while you CAN use the six-wheel die-cast trucks on Polar Express cars, you CANNOT use them on the Milwaukee Road, Pennsylvania, Baltimore & Ohio, or Southern cars from the mid-1970’s.
Jon [8D]