American Flyer Waffle Side Boxcar Is Out

Do you have access to the Lionel O gauge waffle-sided boxcar an you compare it to this new S Gauge Waffle-Side Boxcar?

Andrew

Rusty

Well done on the review.  It does not look like a bad little car really...and at a nice price point (35.00 @ Ro) I think I will pull the trigger on one. Still wish it was a 57' mechanical reefer, oh well...

Ben

falconservice posted:

Do you have access to the Lionel O gauge waffle-sided boxcar an you compare it to this new S Gauge Waffle-Side Boxcar?

Andrew

No.  All I can offer is a web photo I located of an O27 Waffle.

From what I can see, the Flyer Waffle looks much better than the O27 Waffle, which sits higher and has poorly shaped stirrup steps.  There are other detail differences, also.  The Flyer Waffle is definitely not a scaled down version of the O27 car.

Rusty

Since I am the master of the obvious, I have to mention that the most outstanding inaccuracy issue with this car is that fact that it is on friction bearing trucks instead of roller bearing trucks.

I admit that I am inconsistent on my desire for accuracy in my FLYER/HI-Rail rolling stock, but I did retrofit a set of SHS Roller Bearing Hi Rail Trucks on my hopelessly inaccurately detailed K-Line S-gauge Timken Roller Bearing Boxcar. 

Little Tommy

A couple of quick pictures of the Waffle in a scale scenic environment:

Rusty

If I'm not doing S gauge, Marklin 3 rail HO, or 3 rail O, I also dabble in N scale. Micro Trains, as they are wont to do, have a couple variants on very similar cars. Gosh the tooling costs must be astronomical, but so is their customer base.

Anyway, I have a couple different waffle sided box cars by them, and I noticed on one, the trucks are somewhat inboard, and the couplers have longer shanks on them.

Here is a photo that I grabbed off the web that illustrates that.

The S gauge/S Scale waffle sided boxcar has more DIFFERENCES than I realized.

I wonder why they did not use roller bearing trucks since this is a Post-1960 built boxcar.

Andrew

falconservice posted:

The S gauge/S Scale waffle sided boxcar has more DIFFERENCES than I realized.

I wonder why they did not use roller bearing trucks since this is a Post-1960 built boxcar.

Andrew

I would expect the Flyer roller bearing trucks, given their more complex design vs. the current standard truck,  would've added to the cost of the Waffle.  Maybe another 5-10 bucks retail per car.

Rusty

Are these Scale cars?  Nope they are in the Traditional section of the catalog.  They are using the current trucks in that category.  Saves Lionel money and for buyers in this category. 

Thank you for the photos, Rusty.   I have been waiting for theses cars for a long time.   I think they look great!  

I actually like that locking Flyer door handle, Mark.  Compared to the O gauge Lionel doors, which lack it, I think it is an ingenious little thing that Gilbert created.  It serves a real purpose to keep the darned doors closed while the train is in motion.... which is a common annoyance with Lionel O boxcars.  

nice looking car

I called Charles Ro Wednesday and ordered on.  They shipped it this morning.

1. I picked up a NH version at the Lionel retail store in NC today.  I think it is a nice car for the price and happy to see more new stuff from Lionel.
2. 
3. Aflyer

got the new haven and cnw cars today very nice cars for the money

Well, well, well.  One of the guys on Yahoo found something interesting.

There IS a prototype for a 40' waffle sided boxcar.   Lookee here:

Not an exact match, but looks pretty darn close enough to me.  I just might have to rethink taking on another project.

Rusty

Rusty,

Great find, I agree it is close enough for me too!

Aflyer

Waffle: Yes.

40' long: No.

CP 209580 is a 50' car.

Rusty

Rusty's picture looks like a 40 footer. The relative size of the door to car length is different than in the PS-1 50'.

Rich

Great Northern had 40' Plug-door Waffle-sided Boxcars in Glacier Green.

Lionel employees can offer both Great Northern and Seaboard Coast Line as paint schemes in 2016.

Andrew

If you look closely at the dimensional data on the car it indicates the car is a 50 footer.  Guess Lionel used its special ruler for this one.  It is a much nicer looking car than is illustrated in the catalog.  I am tempted.

Roger

richabr posted:

Rusty's picture looks like a 40 footer. The relative size of the door to car length is different than in the PS-1 50'.

 

 

Rich

The Flyonel model (I noticed the 50' dimensional data on the car...) also has a smaller door than the 40' SCL prototype or CP 50 footer.

Found a couple of pictures of the GN plug door waffles:

The Flyer waffle is looking better and better for scalification.

Rusty

Like the New Haven & C&NW versions of the new Flyer car shown above, I bought the "American Flyer Lines" version in blue & yellow.  Production was so long delayed on these cars, but they each still say "BUILT 2014."   Would it have taken that much extra work to correct that to 2015?   LOVE the car though...   Will pick it up a couple of the other paint schemes.   

Mark, as for the length of these new wafflers... maybe Lionel wanted to still be able to use the already-existing standard chassis from the classic Flyer boxcars?   Just a thought.   I do notice that the plastic seems to be a bit thinner on these cars, too.   I guess they found a way to save a few cents there.  

Looks nice.  I just wish Lionel would develop a new diecast truck to replace the one that debuted in 1990.  Even a remake of the last Gilbert version would be fine.  

I had no illusions that the new waffle would be anything but a car designed to be compatible size-wise with traditional Flyer. 

What surprised me is that it isn't a mini-me of the O27 waffle.   At least someone at Lionel did some homework to make a pretty good looking car.

Rusty