Do Atlas Trucks Couple to Lionel?

I have, only recently, started to purchase Atlas cars (and one ABA engine set) - I am 95% Lionel, and they all couple with no problems.

Old Newbie posted:

I am looking at a 3-rail O car with Atlas trucks.  Do these couple well to Lionel?

Thanks.

The more correct question would be, do the Atlas COUPLERS "couple well to Lionel". If the Atlas trucks also are equipped with the large "Lionel style couplers" then the answer would be, yes. However, if the Atlas car is a 2-Rail SCALE car, equipped with 2-Rail SCALE type couplers, then the answers is, maybe, but probably not.

Yes they do. No problem at all.

Pat

It depends on the type of car. 

Which cars are you going to couple together.

The most difficult to couple are the ATLAS O 89'-4" flat car and the LIONEL 86' box cars or auto carriers.

Andrew

All cars of all brands designed for 3-rail O gauge operation will couple with each other - they're designed that way, of course. It wouldn't make sense otherwise. Same with 3RO track - everything operates on everything, theoretically. Even the old 1960's Atlas Austrian-made plastic trucked cars will couple to other 3RO equipment, though these older couplers are dummies only.

Now, having said all that, there are instances where different manufacturers designs, materials and tolerances are such that the stuff (couplers, track, etc.) from A does not "like" the stuff from B. This does happen, but it's the great exception, not the rule. They're all meant to play well together, especially these days. 

My experience (mostly during the 1990s, pre-Atlas ) is that all 3-rail couplers are pretty awful.  Most of them require a hard hit and much-faster-than-prototypical coupling speed to lock together.  Some combinations such as Lionel MPC to K-Line won't close automatically no matter how hard you crash them together.  The geometry just isn't the same. 

The other problem is that some couplers open accidentally during operation.  To prevent this, I use black rubber bands (and in one case krazy glue!) and lock them in the closed position.  For switching operations, my brother and I adopted a policy that you touch the cars together and then lift the car up and engage the closed knuckles by hand.

@Bob does regular operations and I believe he's spent many hours fine-tuning the operation of his couplers.  Other folks switch their whole fleet to Kadee's (which I guess is an option for the wide-radius O72 crowd.)  I haven't had a layout or done operations for many years so maybe during that time it's changed for the better.  My $.02

The short close couplers from Atlas and Lionel are the most similar and will stay coupled. 

The longer the cars with the longer coupler shafts have differences in the design that make them work in unpredictable ways. They can couple together, but one of the cars could uncouple or derail if the track has a sudden dip or bump. 

Andrew