Spotted this rather odd truck on one of my giraffe cars while doing a bit of work on it (after being repaired, the actuator rod was pulled in a bit and wasn't hitting the ramp consistently, so I fabricated an extended shoe for it from aluminum tubing). Anyone know why there'd be springs on the axles? It appears to be a factory truck, as little indents (for lubing?) can be seen above the journals (see photos)...
Any ideas as to what the story is here?
Thanks!
-MMM-
It looks like someone was just trying to keep the wheels at the outer limits of gauge for some reason. Maybe the track trip for the giraffe was causing an issue with this truck.
Rob
Sounds reasonable to me, but why the cutouts on the top of the truck frame? They appear to be factory, and similar to cutouts I've seen on the underside of later Lionel trucks with solid axles. Wonder if this is a later truck someone riveted on at some point; the number on the other truck is "2" while this one says "14"...
Mitch
The numbers on the trucks are probably mold cavity identification numbers. For high usage items like trucks, Lionel, or their sub-contractor, would have used a mold that made more than one truck for every cycle of the injection molding machine. Numbering each mold cavity helps trouble shoot the mold when something goes wrong, and would help in keeping track of any maintenance that was done on each cavity.
(nodnods) Makes sense to me. In any event, I went ahead and removed the springs, and the car works fine. :)
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