I have an old Lionel Scout train from the 1950's. I just bought some new Lionel cars to add to it. The couplers are a little different (I'm surprised Lionel would change them at all) and I can't keep the new cars connected to the older ones. There has to be a remedy to this!! Any help would be appreciated.
Nards,
it sounds like you need to make a transition car.
Replace the truck & coupler on one of your older
cars with a modern truck & coupler, If you don't
have a older car to use, change out the truck &
coupler on one your modern cars with a older truck & coupler.
I do this with my N scale trains when cars have the
old style hook & horn coupler's.
Also have a few Large Scale transitions cars &
an HLW Mack with a hook & loop on one end
& a kadee coupler on the other.
(HLW- Hartland Locomotive Works- American made 1:24 SCALE TRAINS)
Thanks for the info - but the couplers on my older cars are riveted on. The couplers on the new cars screw on. I guess the question is can I get older type couplers to SCREW on the new cars? I would only need two of them. Do they make them??
Okay, if you have an 'old' car(a boxcar) that you feel you can defile,
remove the body from the frame, then use a drill & drill out the rivet.
add a new type coupler using the plastic push type pin that hold them
to the frame. If you don't have a car that you're willing to defile, look
around at junk shops etc for an older car that is missing a truck &
or wheels on one end and convert that to a transition car.
Going a long way back in the memory banks, here. On the Scout units, the recommendation was to bend the coupler down enough to swing the truck 180 degrees, and using a conversion coupler (standard replacement coupler for a PT-1 style truck), lay it up and bend the tabs over the axles.
I think I remember the Scout couplers were cost saving to allow lower retail pricing of the sets.
I just went and checked my Greenberg's from 1978, page 665 shows how to do it.
480-25 is the part number for the coupler, probably changed, any of the usual suspects should have it. Ask for the "tab coupler", has a tab sticking out the side. You can do them all at once, or one now, two next time, two next time....does an adaptor car first, then a full car, full car, until you're done. There is even a way to do it with Box couplers, which I bhave done, and still have on my railroad.
Sam