Friendship Train

I have gotten four of the PS-1 Friendship boxcars this week. I haven't gotten them out of the boxes yet though. I just had to have them after watching a video on McMuffin's Trains about them. I hope to get the passenger cars too.

I have a combination of these new Lionel Friendship Train (FT) cars and MTH’s FT cars from a few years ago.  Charles Ro just sent me the passenger cars.  I also have some Atlas cars that I have added FT banners to.

I really hope they all work well together behind my Centipedes.

I picked up the CNW Friendship car from Charlie Ro with the intention of ordering all the others. But my issue is that the new Lionel Friendship box cars do not couple with other Lionel cars. I had to rework the coupler in order for it to fit other couplers. Also, the trucks are VERY cheap.

As a result, I will not be buying any more of the Friendship cars until this get corrected.

RAY

I picked up the Friendship Train passenger cars today. They are very nice.  Lionel did a great job with them. For as frustrated as I am with the Friendship PS-1 boxcars, the passenger cars are fantastic.

I still believe Lionel should address the coupler design on the boxcars and send out replacements.  For the most part, I can now get them to track forward through my O72 curves, but they will derail 100% of the time backing through them.  As much as I shouldn’t have to do it, if Lionel doesn’t replace them, I may swap the trucks from other scale freight cars.  

One other thing that hasn’t been said about the Friendship PS-1s: they don’t have interior loads.  Personally, it’s not that big of a deal since I leave the doors closed for the most part, but it does reflect the continued cheapening of what has historically been a great line of Lionel scale freight cars.

I took out one of the Friendship boxcars that I got this week to look at the couplers and the paint job. The hidden uncoupling tabs are definitely hidden. They were not the easiest thing to reach without causing the car to lift up off the track. I tried several times uncoupling the Friendship car and having it couple with an older style PS-1. Everything went as planned, so maybe the one I tried out (1 of 4) is okay. I also had it go around O-36 curves with an older model backwards and forwards with no trouble. Overall, the car is nice but for some reason it doesn't seem to be at the same level of quality as my older models. The graphics are well done but the paint on the boxcar could be a little better. I still might pick up the other two roadnames down the line.

@NS1975 posted:

I took out one of the Friendship boxcars that I got this week to look at the couplers and the paint job. The hidden uncoupling tabs are definitely hidden. They were not the easiest thing to reach without causing the car to lift up off the track. I tried several times uncoupling the Friendship car and having it couple with an older style PS-1. Everything went as planned, so maybe the one I tried out (1 of 4) is okay. I also had it go around O-36 curves with an older model backwards and forwards with no trouble. Overall, the car is nice but for some reason it doesn't seem to be at the same level of quality as my older models. The graphics are well done but the paint on the boxcar could be a little better. I still might pick up the other two roadnames down the line.

Did you run it through your curves coupled to other Friendship cars or other cars with the same type of couplers?  They are fine by themselves or with other cars with articulated couplers, but when paired with cars with similar couplers is when they pull each other off the track.

I didn't try putting more than one of them together yet.

My experience is they don’t work well paired with the other Friendship cars (my guess it would be the same if paired with the milk cars or any other car with the new non-articulated couplers). If you work in some cars with articulated couplers, like older PS-1s, you’ll probably be fine.

I tried two of them together on O-36 curves going backwards and forwards.

This is going backwards. Now this is only two of them and a short test run at that but they did not derail.

So, after putting four of them together, I did have two of them derail going onto a O-36 switch turnout backwards. I just loosened the screws🪛 just a little bit under the trucks and that seemed to correct the problem. Allows a little more movement and they stay on track.

Good feedback!  I’ll give it a try. I really like these cars and hope they make a bunch of them (with improved trucks)!