Issue with Menards Rolling Stock

Yes, many of the cars do have various issues with the trucks that need a little tweaking to operate properly.  This is the only drawback  I have found with the Menard's cars, namely trucks and couplers, that are a low spot with otherwise good looking cars.  Still a great value for the money!

I have had a few issues as well, but most are simple fixes and I guess I could avoid the issues if I paid $50+ for Lionel cars.  LOL.  I do not mind a little tweaking for $20(and a free vehicle too).  Still represents a great value from my perspective.

Yeah they have great customer service so they are always happy to exchange. I am not very handy so I only fix the ones I feel comfortable fixing. It just is a bit of a hassle when I have to send back and wait for replacement.

Cheers, Pete

I am curious, who pays the postage on a return......my wife buys all kinds of clothes on line and returns are done, usually for free by manufacturers. With no Menards near me, I have wondered how this works

Menards sends prepaid FedEx label to me each time.

Cheers, Pete

Thanks, that is more or less what fashion companies do

Early Lionel MPC had its issues.....  But M is trying to do right.

I take a M boxcar, and put a small drop of LeBelle's oil at the point where the axle enters the truck frame.  Then I put a drop of oil whete the truck frame attaches to the car frame.  This truck is free rolling at this point.

I have several Manards cars, bought each when they have the free car promo. The Ford P/U is next just gotta decide on a car.

I digress- the earlier cars have all been fine. The last one I got was a NH box car. Looks great but one truck kept derailing. I checked the wheel gauge against some Lionel cars and they were a little bit too close together. It was a simple fix and the car runs fine now. I also put a drop of oil on the axle points.

Bob

FWIW, the trucks on Menard's cars do require good lubrication or they'll have significant rolling resistance.  They'll never roll like modern needle-point axles, but lubrication does make things a whole lot better.

Pete,

I stopped buying Menard's rolling stock over a year ago. After the 5th or 6th straight dud (all truck related) I'd had enough. Ranged from relatively minor to completely hosed assembly. The worst was when I purchased one of those multi-packs of box cars and all but one was defective.

 Too bad. Price was right.

Yeah that's pretty much where it is at now, it's almost a miracle if both trucks are good.

Cheers, Pete

Here's an idea.  If Menards has the car you want, and for a lesser price than say MTH or Lionel sell the same car, or it Menards is the only manufacturer, buy the car, and if possible, buy some Lionel trucks for a few bucks more and change them out.  If that's not possible, see if you have some old Lionel rolling stock that have matching attachment styles and cannibalize those.

The reason I say this.  Menards has an M&M's hopper I really like.  But, if the trucks are suspect, I'm not sure I want to buy that one.  I don't think MTH or Lionel or K-Line make the hopper I speak of.  Oh they make M&M advertised products, just not that particular one.  I have no idea how Menards attaches their trucks to the body of the car, but if it's the simple tiny screw through a tiny hole, or even a plastic pin that spreads out at the bottom through a large hole, I can work with that.  I have two Lionel hoppers that were made in the 70's that use the pin through the big hole method, and I've replaced several trucks by buying some good inexpensive Lionel truck sets.  Menards makes some really cool military flat bed cars.  My theme is the food and beverage industry using the old billboard advertising.  But if I were into running a military train, Menards has some great stuff out there for one just like that.  Would hate to lose out because of truck issues.

Just a suggestion.  Cost a lot more than oil on the axle at the wheel, which is a great idea.  But if the axles are suspect and the wheels don't spin, what else did they mess up.

And on the subject of rolling stock and trucks, why are Kadee couplers all the rage?  What is it about those that makes them so wonderful?  Just asking, not judging.  I have seen all sorts of videos about how to install them, but what is it about them that makes them so sought after?  Or am I missing something?

Speaking of switching out the trucks to Lionel or MTH, what style and where is a good place to buy?

I have a piece of rolling stock from one of the Mystery Boxes that needs new trucks.

Lionel model 6-14078, set of 2 in a box.  Model Train Stuff.com has them for $18 minus what shipping will cost.  Several other places have them if you do a google search but not for 18 bucks.  They are the tiny screw attachment type.  I have bought several pair of them and had no problems what so ever with them.  I bought 3 pair for some custom made flat beds I built, all fit perfectly, were the right height, and to date not one has frozen up or stopped spinning or required even a drop of oil.

If knowledge/memory serves, I believe Menard's rolling stock has three different styles of trucks.  There are plastic trucks, metal Bettendorf-style trucks, and metal roller bearing-style trucks.

I like the Bettendorf style trucks the best, because they fit my modeled time frame the best.  However, I think they are the most problematic of the styles, simply from factory assembly techniques (not always the best).  Easy to overcome the shortcomings if you are mechanically inclined (fortunately I am).  Maybe not so much if you're not mechanically inclined.

The one main thing I do with the Bettendorf-style trucks, since I don't mess with magnetic uncoupling, is to remove the complete bottom plate uncoupler assemblies from the axles, and leave them off.  Once this plate is out of the way, anything else wrong with the trucks becomes a lot easier to deal with.  To remove the trucks from the frame or body, rivets can be ground off and replaced with nuts and bolts, or pressed-in pins can be pried out and re-used.  Bent axles can be straightened, out-of-gauge wheels can be gauged correctly and CA glued or Loc-Tited, and stamped steel truck frames can be straightened as required.  And if you didn't make a mess out of those bottom plates when you removed them, they can be re-installed too if you really want to.

Tearing a truck down to it's basic parts and reassembling it would go a long ways towards never having to be at the mercy of the poor factory assembly Gods again.  Twenty bucks for an O-gauge train car is still a pretty good deal, even if you have to tweak it a little bit.

Yardmaster96 posted:

Here's an idea.  If Menards has the car you want, and for a lesser price than say MTH or Lionel sell the same car, or it Menards is the only manufacturer, buy the car, and if possible, buy some Lionel trucks for a few bucks more and change them out.  If that's not possible, see if you have some old Lionel rolling stock that have matching attachment styles and cannibalize those.

The reason I say this.  Menards has an M&M's hopper I really like.  But, if the trucks are suspect, I'm not sure I want to buy that one.  

I wouldn’t put Lionel or MTH trucks on a Menard’s car.  That would kind of defeat the purpose of getting an inexpensive Menard’s car.  That said, I’ve put MTH trucks that cost me about $15 a pair on about a dozen Lionel 6456 hoppers that cost me about $10 each. 

Most of my problems with Menard’s cars involve the gauge.  It’s usually about 1 to 1.5 mm too narrow and easily fixed. 

I bought the 4 car M&M set (1 hopper and 3 box cars).  Not sure if my set is representative, but it had no problems out of the box.

I have only 2 Menard's cars. The box car derailed on curves until I noticed that a rear wheel hit the low-hanging brake tank. Once I bent it up a bit, the problem disappeared.

As for Kadees, I like the smaller size, but more importantly, coupling happens at a very low speed. No need to smash the cars together. And no need to buy a lot of uncoupling tracks. You can fit the uncoupling magnets anywhere you want. I've truck-mounted my couplers , which takes more work, but with 36" radius track, it's the only way to go and they work fine. 

Terry

Thanks Terry.  Appreciate the information.  I have no real plans to ever try them, but was never able to fully grasp their appeal.  They looked like any other plastic coupler I'd ever seen.  So it's their coupling sensitivity that makes them appealing?  I can see that.  Whenever I try to slowly back a loco into a car, both couplers open, they appear to shut, but I've learned to move out at 1 smph until I see that they latched.  Since we are on the subject, how is the latching strength?  I have several cars on my layout that when they are part of a 60 car pull, they come apart.  The only way I knew to fix that was tie them closed and forget unlatching them the scientific way.  I have to use my 0-5-0 hand switcher separate the cars.  I've discussed this phenomenon in another thread a couple years ago, but other than whatever method they used to "tie them shut", I never did get any shop fix for it.  One member railed against rigging them and told us to "fix the problem" instead of succumbing to the use of quick fixes.  Ok, perhaps some knowledge as to what is causing it and how he repairs the issue when it happens to him.  STOP THAT!!!! is not a fix.

I bought a Menards ?11 inch? flat car way back when. The trucks were attached with rivets not screws and they were loose. The car would wobble side to side as it went down the track. I tried to tighten the rivets (did not know what I was doing) and ended up with a car that not only wobbled but was also warped end to end.........I showed the mess to a friend who chastised me. He could have fixed the rivets. He had also purchased a set of the longer version - ?14 inch?. Those trucks were attached with screws and he had no issues. His cars looked great and ran just fine but I never did buy another Menards car after that.

Hopefully, Menards have read all these posts and will make the necessary corrections on all future freight cars. If they do that it would be a major game changer.

Joe Fauty - I feel your pain.  Nothing like seeking assistance and information and getting ridicule, even if your friend was just ribbing you in fun.  I had a similar situation with Lionel rolling stock.  There was a series of hoppers they built in the 70's that had that same rivet attached truck system and they did the same thing.  Wobbled from side to side like kids at a rock concert swaying side to side to the final song.  The only thing missing was the cigarette lighter.  I ripped the rivets out by the roots, and found some plastic car door mounting pins where the bottoms are shaped like arrow heads.  You push them through the gaping hole left by the rivet and when you finally get it fully pushed through the hole, it snaps into place holding the truck to the body and get this, it still spins freely allowing the truck to do what it was designed to do.  No over dramatized side to side wobble.  Maybe your friend could have fixed the issue using the existing rivet, but my idea was better. 

Jim Sutter - Amen brother.  That's why we do this.  Not just to see if anyone else is suffering from the same factory malfunctions, but to bring said malfunctions to light so other's will be aware of them and prepared for them.  Recalls on vehicles are normally caused by thousands of letters, emails, and testimonials from drivers who have suffered from the ongoing, unsolved issue.  Automobiles can kill if they aren't repaired, model trains just cost a lot and don't work the way they were supposed to.  So since death or maiming is not usually a factor, MTH, Lionel, Menards, and all the other tier 1 companies making model trains raking in the dollars don't see the urgency to "fix" the problems, they just let the new owner of the problem figure out something that works.  I enjoy my new hobby immensely.  I love my grandson to the point of total devotion to him.  But that doesn't change the fact he's a knot head and can be a pill to deal with at times.  Just because you like something and pay tons of attention to it, doesn't mean you should have to suck it up and deal with it's problems.  When my trains or their products are not working or are built wrong, I tell the company.  When my grandson isn't working or is acting like he's built wrong, I tell his mother.

From the above posts, it sounds like Menards needs to address these issues for present and potential forum purchasers.

Yardmaster,

The only time my Kadees come apart is the transition point between grade and level and that's usually because the couplers were not exactly aligned when installed. My layout is nowhere large enough to run a 60-car train, so I can't help you there!

Terry

I've purchased four cars from Menards.

I'm really disappointed in the two double stack container cars I bought.  I had to squeeze the sides of the trucks together to keep the loose wheel sets from falling off the car.  (Despite doing that, they are still very loose).  The bright shiny chrome plastic "accent" parts give the car a very cheap, unrealistic, toy-like appearance.

The appearance of the quad hopper car I bought is more realistic; but the top edges of both trucks rub against the bottom edges of the car, thus preventing the trucks from turning smoothly when going around turns.

For the price, I wasn't expecting top quality... but I wasn't expecting cheap junk either.  Oh well, lesson learned.

Not to be "that guy" but all these "buy some replacement wheels and trucks and replace them yourself" doesn't fly with me.  Regardless of price (and I believe Menards are pricing to be competitive) you should receive a quality product that works as expected out of the box.

If this were a random problem with a lemon or 2 here or there it would be understandable but from the amount of complaints about virtually the same problem from so many different people I'm not inclined to order any of these cars when I was initially very excited about all the options Menards offers.

Different argument I know but would you be OK with having to buy and replace a poorly manufactured tire on a brand new car?

LeighL - I fully agree.  My suggestion to purchase a set of Lionel trucks was the best I could come up with that I felt would fully fix the problem and eliminate the bending and oiling and rigging that was going on.  Follow my thought on this.

You can't tell me that somehow, someway, Menards is living out its days in complete oblivion to the threads being typed on this forum.  Someone has had to have contacted them at some point telling them their personal nightmare with the trucks they are installing on their products.  But......Menards just sends back the usual tow the line, cookie cutter response that starts with "We at Menards strive to" and ends with "we assure you we will look into this."  Meanwhile none of the products in question were ever recalled from any shelf in any store, more victims, I mean customers, were added to the body count, I mean list of purchasers.  They too got home, opened the box, and discovered the bridge troll residing inside.  Now they have to make a decision.  Fix it themselves, pay to have it fixed by a qualified service person at some train store somewhere that's either within driving distance or send it to them and spend more money in shipping both ways.  You hit the nail on the head firmly and vigorously.  Menards either needs to get their crap together and make cars worth buying, or go back to selling hardware...….We are talking about the hardware chain, right?

Another thing that would be nice, is if someone from Menards would acknowledge that they have read this large post and promise us that they will make the necessary corrections.

tcripe- My couplers do the same thing.  I have a slight dip on each side of the room, almost straight across from each other where the cars at high rates of speed have dipped down or up just enough to finally cause that creeping coupler to let go.  Creeping in this case is just that, it creeps upward until a variable in travel causes it to finally get to terminal "let go", and the cars come apart.  Due to the fact this happens during a 60 car pull, it's usually quite immediate and somewhat quieting.  One second you hear the loud noise of 60 cars being pulled at 55 miles per hour and a split second later, the quieter sound of 20 cars sitting stalled on the track as a locomotive still going 55 barrels down on the rear car.

I've noticed my couple issues, especially when they fail and open, is only when I am pulling more than the 12 or 13 cars each train is set up to pull.  It's when I get into the 30 or 40 range, and go 30 to 40 smph or higher, that the pull against middle cars gets to be too much for the consist to take and invariably, somewhere in the train, a coupler finally can't hold on and, my thought, the pin gets bounced downward just enough for the coupler to let go and open.  It has to be that, because even thought the coupler has failed and opened, the pin that holds it closed, didn't break.  Tying them shut keeps the part of the coupler that moves the pin from floating or moving and forces the coupler to either hold on or finally break.  Thank goodness that hasn't happened yet. 

Oh, and I barely have enough room for a 60 car pull.  As long as I remain on the outer most track, and still, the Loco and the last car, can talk to each other butt to face. 

Jim - I fielded that idea as a way to combat the furloughed employees problem what with the virus.  Let those workers who have internet access stay at home and browse the forums for just these types of threads.  MTH, Lionel, Menards, Bachmann, any manufacturer for that matter.  Granted it would be boring reading, but search engines let you cut to the chase.  Read what we have to say, chime in, be nice, and let us know "we hear you, and when the virus lets us get back to work, we will look at this and let you know what we have decided."  I've said this before.  My last encounter with a person who worked at one of the manufacturers was, "stop whining and go play with your trains."

My daughters bought me Frisco and Sante fe tanker cars.  These are gorgeous looking tanks.  I finally opened them up today and they both seemed to roll extremely easily around my tighter corners.  I live in an o-27 world so these tankers are hitting the extent of my length, but I am extremely happy with them.  I see where people would say you get what you pay for on these, but I am satisfied.  jeff...

I have found Menards to be a good choice if you want to buy a whole train and have a few bucks left in your pocket.  They are inexpensive and there is a reason for that. While some folks have reported zero problems with them, I have found that I generally have to do some fiddling to get them to run well on my Gargraves layout.  By the way, some recent RMT and Williams cars appear to be exactly the same (except for the railroad/colors and the price).

I have found that Menards has always made good on their products.  While there may be problems with some cars, they have good customer support.  I was interested to hear that they now require a return.  In the past, they replaced faulty cars for me without requiring a return of the bad car.

Here are some of the problems I encountered and what I did to fix them.

These cars seem to be produced with the gauge (distance between wheel flanges) anywhere between 26.0 mm and 26.5 mm. I have found that 27 mm is the minimum for good tracking through Gargraves switches.  MTH and Lionel have a pretty consistent 27mm gauge.  I generally shot for 27.5 when I adjust the gauge.

Hopper paint is sometimes thin where you don’t see it (inside the hopper, above the trucks and on the underside), but it looks fine where it counts (on the four sides).

There is a design flaw in that the hopper trucks hit the bottom steps (the step that is part of the plastic truck subframe). The rivets on a few trucks are tight and some are not so tight. Seems like the tighter the rivet, the more the truck hits the step. This can be fixed by CAREFULLY bending the step outward. I wasn’t careful enough on one step and I broke it.

Some hoppers had the plastic truck sub frame tab on the wrong side of the car frame…easily fixed.

Some hoppers had missing a screw from a truck side.  Some had the threads stripped.  Some had the tiny Phillips screw head sheared off or the head rounded.  I asked for new trucks, but I don’t think Menards has parts.  They replaced the cars with bad truck threads.  I also fixed some with crazy glue.  I have not seen this issue lately so it looks like they fixed the production issue.

On some cars the coupler won’t close.  The truck needs to be disassembled and reassembled with the tab on the correct side.

I add 2 ounces of weight inside the hoppers.

I’m not crazy about the silvery wheels so I apply two coats of Noelube 2 to turn the shiny wheels black.

Some box cars have the wobbles. That can be fixed on box cars by replacing the washer with a different size or by adding a shim.

On some box cars the brake cylinder/valve is too low and may contact switch points and, in some cases, getting snagged on them. The brake cylinder is rivetted to a tab on the sheet metal under carriage. The tab is bent 90 degrees from the vertical stiffener and in some cases, the tab is not bent enough so the cylinder hangs a bit lower. I tried bending the tab on one car with some pliers, but that didn’t help too much. So, I filed the brake valve so that it clears.

I’m not crazy about the short flat cars with plastic trucks, but I have several of the 14” flat cars that run well after I adjusted the gauge.

I’ll close by saying that I’m quite sure that Menards is paying attention to this thread. Most of the problems I listed above have been fixed on recent Menards purchases.

Well as the old saying goes "you get what you pay for"

LeighL posted:

Not to be "that guy" but all these "buy some replacement wheels and trucks and replace them yourself" doesn't fly with me.  Regardless of price (and I believe Menards are pricing to be competitive) you should receive a quality product that works as expected out of the box.

If this were a random problem with a lemon or 2 here or there it would be understandable but from the amount of complaints about virtually the same problem from so many different people I'm not inclined to order any of these cars when I was initially very excited about all the options Menards offers.

Different argument I know but would you be OK with having to buy and replace a poorly manufactured tire on a brand new car?

I completely agree with this. The defect rate for me has literally been more than one out of every two pieces bought. I am also not very handy unfortunately so I take the chance of breaking something when I try to fix what I shouldn’t have fix. Another thing I actually responded to Menards customer service about, which really did tick me off: they told me they wouldn’t send a replacement out until they received the defective unit back. I don’t agree at all with that philosophy when they already have my money in hand. When I told the rep that that didn’t seem right, she responded with “oh well that’s our policy.” That ends up creating more than a week lag from the time I paid. It’s not that I can’t live without the boxcar for another week, it’s simply the principle.

Cheers, Pete

NYC 428,

I disagree with you. Everyone, that responded to this post was looking for their brand new item to work great. I would be very disappointed, if I had to do some minor repair every time a received a new freight car from Menards.  I don't care how little it cost. Their products are advertised as being brand new. Brand new to me, doesn't mean sitting down at my work bench and start fixing.

I had one where the wheels would not spin freely.  I oiled them but the same issue.  I popped the wheels out and cut off the very tip of the axel on both ends, just a tiny amount, worked like a charm, now they spin and spin.  Everything els I have bought from them works fine.

wheres the Menards Guy he usually pipes in by now??

AlanRail - As Vin Diesel said in XXX, "Bora Bora"

YM96  - he's not avoiding us as he has always been informative to us. Give him some slack.

So I opened a 6 pack of Menards SF Hoppers; I measured the distance with a micrometer between the wheels on each truck.

It was obvious that compared to a typical Lionel car there was a visible difference that varied from .044" to .02"  That is an average of four hundredths of an inch smaller than Lionel's wheel separation  width. This may seem small but on a tighter radius track it could cause a tracking issue not to mention greater wheel and wear on any radius track from increased friction against the rails.

Also, I noted that on several of the cars that at least one axle was clearly bent.

I'm thinking Menards needs better QA on their truck construction.