(04/12/22) New! Ore Cars from Menards!

A very nice set of ore cars!

Those are four very nice ore cars. I like all four.

Love the UP design! Just ordered 2 8-packs

I love how lots of ore cars looks like a really long train but still fits on smaller layouts!

👍🏼  Yep, love them ordering some CN cars love the color and the trucks at that price point with die cast wheels are awesome 😆
    Roger

Conrail & Penn Central please!

@Mark Holmgren 110217 posted:

Where does it say “metal trucks?” I see “metal wheels and operating couplers” and nothing about metal trucks.

It was stated in the e-mail that was sent out by Menards. The Menards guy usually attaches the e-mail as a PDF in his initial posts. Notice his thread starter has been edited. I presume the edit was due to the attachment being deleted when the discrepancy regarding the metal trucks was noted.

Wow, I see no mention of metal trucks. Just wheels. Advertising looks correct to me.

Yes, my email said metal trucks. However, it has been changed in the above announcement. nice cars, I think I will get a few.

Jeff

My e-mail said metal trucks also.

And is it really a big deal? Let's stop making mountains out of molehill.

email says metal trucks

I bet some decorated for Menards itself would sell as well.

I would like to see, Chessie, B. and O., Conrail, Penn Central, Bessemer and Lake Erie, Erie Lackawanna and Pittsburg and Shawmut.

These are great looking cars at a very attractive price point .  I would like to see in the future some Bessemer and Lake Erie cars ,  Missabe and Iron Range,  Kennecott Copper Corporation as well as some Conrail ones. 

I may get some of those CN ones.

I am glad Menards is offering these.

Rory

I agree with @Mike0289  I'm picking up my 8-pack of BN cars Monday!  8 cars plus a 14.5" BN Lionel GP38 will fit on my 6' staging tracks!

@VistaDomeScott posted:

Conrail & Penn Central please!

Penn Central for sure...but they have to be black.  Not green.

Tom

@Tom Densel posted:

Penn Central for sure...but they have to be black.  Not green.

Tom

I agree.  And the Conrail brown, and not blue.

Bessemer would be a good addition, especially considering the Bessemer ore train set in the recent Lionel catalog.  It would be a great way to grow a long ore train.

Andy

1 add says just metal wheels and the other says metal trucks with die-cast wheels. So is it plastic trucks with metal wheels or metal trucks with die-cast wheel?

Just curious - has anyone tried weathering the load with a little black wash to make it stand out -  pic's ?

@Bill Grafmiller posted:

1 add says just metal wheels and the other says metal trucks with die-cast wheels. So is it plastic trucks with metal wheels or metal trucks with die-cast wheel?

Any Menards' rolling stock equipped with roller-bearing style trucks (the sole exception being the longest 14 3/4" flatcars) should be assumed to have plastic trucks, regardless of advertising copy.

If the car is shown with friction-bearing style trucks, those are always diecast, as Menards has yet to  commission a plastic version of these.

Wheels are metal regardless of truck type. Plastic wheels pretty much vanished with 1970's Lionel low-end starter sets and Atlas' O scale cars from the same era.

---PCJ

I would then say this is shades of false advertisements would you not.

I guess the Menards guy doesn’t read the post here. As at least the last three releases of cars had the e-mails truck description differ from the add they place on this forum. I don’t get how they can’t get it straight. Now I know to not expect metal trucks and could be pleasantly surprised if I were to get a car with them.
Dan

It's like bate and switch

I have purchased there tank cars . I like the cars but the trucks do not run very well on my layout. The couplers are trash so I am changing them out with lionel trucks that have no lobster claws and putting kadee's in place of. Also weight the cars in the process. So I have added the cost to the car but I am happy . Looks great on my layout. The plus also is they do not  derail . A good project if you have time patience.

I would be interested in the inside measurements to see if some loads I have would fit.

@Bill Grafmiller posted:

I would then say this is shades of false advertisements would you not.

I would not.

Claims such as "false advertising" and "bait (not bate) and switch" imply a purpose and intent to deceive on the part of the maker.

I am sure Menard's did not intentionally set out to deceive anyone.

IMO, this was simply an unfortunate typographical error between the e-mail ad department and the website ad department as to which parts of the trucks and wheels were metal.

Should they have been more careful to make sure they were accurate - absolutely, but this appears to have been a legitimate mistake in my opinion and we all make them.

Thank you for correcting my spelling much appreciated.

Rail.  I used fine sand to load. So I did not open tank up.

OK guys.....enough about the "bait and switch" crap.  Use some common sense.  It is not likely that a manufacturer like Menards would risk their business on a bait and switch scheme over this hobby or anything else they bring to market.  I have been in the marketing and advertising business long enough that mistakes are made and some of them are big ones!  Rather than raking Menards over the coals here on the forum, how about just contacting them directly.

Alan right fellows. There's no way Menard's would do a bait and switch. They are trying very hard to give us a great product at a super price.

Here’s my first unit train!  Couplers work good too.

@Hannibal-St Joseph RR posted:

Here’s my first unit train!  Couplers work good too.

THANK YOU!! Does it derail frequently?  Does the green match the website?

Just ordered a pair of the PRR's.

Hi!  Yes, there are derail problems with these cars because of their inconsistency - which is revealed much easier due to their light weight.  Wheel sets are too narrow in some cases (26.26mm) leading to frog climbing through my Marx 034 switches - an issue not present in any of my Lionel cars at 26.6+mm.  I will be opening up those wheel sets to the 26.6mm range with which I have no issues, and probably adding some weight.

They are all also bowed in the center, but it’s really only noticeable from above.

Regarding the color, they are a brighter green than my brand new Lionel BN engine, but whether it matches the website I don’t know.

For context, I ordered 2x 8-packs of the UP.

I haven't had any derail issues so far, but I'm not putting anything other than more Menards ore cars and a caboose behind them I will probably add some weight to them though so they don't bounce around quite so much.

The color is a little bright for UP yellow, at least compared to my Legacy E7s and MTH premier passenger cars.

1 of the 16 cars has a coupler which seems too loose - the bar underneath hangs too low, making it too easy for the coupler to open. I'm not sure how that mechanism works, actually, if there's supposed to be a spring in there that pulls it back up or something else. First picture is a normal coupler while the second is the problematic one.

Any thoughts on a fix for that outside of putting a rubber band around it?

It's too bad the color is a little off, but I'm not sweating it too much. It's naive to expect a product comparable to Lionel/MTH/Atlas/etc at 1/3 the price. I'm happy with my purchase!

@Hannibal-St Joseph RR posted:

Hi!  Yes, there are derail problems with these cars because of their inconsistency - which is revealed much easier due to their light weight.  Wheel sets are too narrow in some cases (26.26mm) leading to frog climbing through my Marx 034 switches - an issue not present in any of my Lionel cars at 26.6+mm.  I will be opening up those wheel sets to the 26.6mm range with which I have no issues, and probably adding some weight.

They are all also bowed in the center, but it’s really only noticeable from above.

Regarding the color, they are a brighter green than my brand new Lionel BN engine, but whether it matches the website I don’t know.

These are very close to the Lionel ore cars, including the slight inward bow at the center.

Hello Dan

That was a great posting about the wheel spacing and other details on the cars.  I do have a question, when you say you are "opening up those wheel sets"  how exactly are you doing this and not cracking the wheels?  Did you create a tool for this or are you just very carefully pulling them apart somehow. Please share your process if possible.

Thanks

Rory

@Hannibal-St Joseph RR posted:

Hi!  Yes, there are derail problems with these cars because of their inconsistency - which is revealed much easier due to their light weight.  Wheel sets are too narrow in some cases (26.26mm) leading to frog climbing through my Marx 034 switches - an issue not present in any of my Lionel cars at 26.6+mm.  I will be opening up those wheel sets to the 26.6mm range with which I have no issues, and probably adding some weight.

They are all also bowed in the center, but it’s really only noticeable from above.

Regarding the color, they are a brighter green than my brand new Lionel BN engine, but whether it matches the website I don’t know.