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So, I may have made a bit of an expensive mistake... I bought a 3454 in fairish condition, largely because it looked nice, and the mechanism seemed interesting. The price was a little above what I’ve seen online but not outrageously so. I’m just prone to buying sprees and spending more than I mean to when trains are in the room! I knew about postwar shoe couplers and how they worked in theory but had no real experience with them.

Well, now I have the experience and the answer to “how does that work” is “not well”: they get hung up on all my switches and like an idiot I managed to cause a shoe to come off. Now I’m mulling: 1. How to go about fixing it, 2. If there’s a fix for the switch/shoe issues (probably not but I’m willing to hear suggestions), 3. If not should I consider selling the car?

Even if I decide to sell, I would want to try and fix what I can (higher asking price (?) plus least I can do for the next owner). The mechanism still works (or at least did before the switch messed up the one shoe), but the door spring needs to be replaced I think: it’ll spring back into position if you open the door by hand but it doesn’t open when the unloading mechanism operates.

I think it’s been rewired at least once before: the wires running from the truck to the body & mechanism are a light blue and are nice and pliable which to me says it was repaired perhaps in the 1990s.

And no, it doesn’t have its original Baby Ruth crates with it, those were missing. But I knew that I had some bits of wood of proper dimensions I could use to test, and of course there are plenty of places to get repro spare parts for postwar stuff.

I know you will be wanting pictures but I have had the thing apart far too much already today and need a break from it! Those corner screws to get the body off are a pain.

So not the best way to get ones foot wet in PW Lionel, but thankfully I have you guys.

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Search for a TT-208  Shoe,  TC-109 Fiber Plate, and TT-210 Rivet. You'll need a way to peen the rivet over (or epoxy it...). You also need to re-solder the wire to the rivet. If you're comfortable with that, go for it. The very flexible blue wire is actually correct for 1946 production. It could have been replaced, but I wouldn't conclude it's been replaced just because it's blue.

The door is controlled by the ejecting mechanism. Each press of the unload button should run through cycle of opening the door and ejecting a cube, with the door staying open after the first one. After some number of cube tosses (5, I think) the door closes. The tab broken on the stepper or it's just stuck are the common issues. Do a search here for "3454" and you'll get a few posts with pictures.

As far as it getting ripped off the truck, it could have been damaged before you got it and was hanging too low. The other (more likely) possibility is that  the switches you have aren't "shoe friendly". The Ross-Curtis-Gargraves  type switches are known to grab shoes. You can usually minimize this by inserting a bent track pin into the guard rail ends to allow the shoe to ride up and over the rail, or just bevel the rail. The Ross website has a FAQ #14 that addresses this possible solution.

Last edited by Former Member

Thank you all for the responses. I think my switches are Lionel 6-65122/1 and their wide radius (042 iirc) counterparts. They finicky on a good day, hence why when the car derailed going over them I did not think to check the shoes first thing. I’m not sure if these types of switches are “shoe unfriendly” (they seem to be?) or if the shoes are hanging too low, or both. I do think that the one shoe might have been a bit loose anyways. What height should the shoes be at?

I sort don’t want to modify a car this old, I’d feel like I was ruining a piece of history. But I’d be willing to try something with the switches as they are hardly old or rare.

Last edited by Redshirt214

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