Has This Ever Happened To You?

[Keith 55]

My brother and his girlfriend picked out a Roundhouse RTR 40' 3-bay offset hopper to give to me as a present, in L&A paint. Very cool.
He tells me it already has MicroTrains' Bettendorf trucks on it, as purchased from the LHS.
(Hmm...the jewel case says "Rapido And The New MDC Knuckle Coupler".)
I take a peek and tell him that it has MT Archbar trucks, and that he's a chump for not swapping them out and keeping the archbars, because he needs them for his older era.
After I get home I look closer and it turns out that:
It has one of each!!
(Guess it never occured to either of us to look at BOTH trucks. Who puts 2 different kinds of trucks on the same car?)

Moral of this story: There is more 'used' rollingstock at your LHS than you think, and some of it wasn't 'used' very well.

[wpgrailfan]

Who puts 2 different kinds of trucks on the same car?


This may have been someone's conversion car. I have done this for 2 of my cars. This way, I can slowly convert my rolling stock to MT, without shortening the length of the consist.

Essentially, my consist looks like my attached image....
(If that makes any sense at all)

[Keith 55]

Marc, they are both MT trucks/couplers, just 2 totally different sideframes.
(Archbar trucks were banned from interchange back around 1930, because they were bolted together rather than being a single casting, and the bolts would vibrate loose, so they would sometimes fall apart at speed.)

[LarryMc]

One truck may have been damaged and replaced with
the other just to keep the car running?