Ore Cars: Lionel vs. K-Line vs. MTH

MTH and K-LIne are almost if not identical in size, Lionel a tad smaller. I have seen pictures of real deal ore cars at the loading docks on the Great Lakes, they were different sizes. I run all three in ore car consists.

Bill

And Don't forget the 1970's Atlas Ore Cars too!

Not sure if they are still available but RMT had some very nice scale ore cars a few years ago.Might find them on the secondary market.Nick

I have a few of each brand. There are differences in size for sure. ?Right now my mind can't recall which is which size wise.....but I now I  don't mix them.  Someone here will know and post....

rockstars1989 posted:

Not sure if they are still available but RMT had some very nice scale ore cars a few years ago.Might find them on the secondary market.Nick

Agreed! I have a few, and they are really nice. They also mix well with the other brand, scale-wise.

The RMT, K-Line, and MTH ore cars are very close in size, it's hard to see any difference.  I don't have any Lionel ore cars, so I can't speak about those.  I mix the three brands above and they look fine.

The Lionel cars look OK from the side when running with the other brands of cars. But they are narrower, like many of their O-27 cars.

Williams by Bachmann also has a line of ore cars coming out. I assume they will be the same as the K-Line cars and RMT cars (which will also be available again) if they are made from the same ex-Sanda Kan factory tooling.

The problem with some - most? - of these ore cars is that they sit much too high on the trucks (see the LS&I cars above) - looks like they are expecting a flood. Also, those trucks are modern roller-bearing trucks, and I've seen few ore cars with those.

This does not apply to the Atlas 80's cars, which are the best-looking of the bunch. Putting those nice old Atlas plastic trucks on the newer cars (and adding some weight, probably) would greatly improve the looks of the "high pockets" cars. The Atlas couplers are essentially dummies, but unless you plan to do a lot of switching of these cars individually (and, come on, do you?), it doesn't matter - and they never open inadvertently.

I think the old (Austrian) Atlas tooling may be used for some of the modern production?

Also, don't the newer Lionel and MTH cars sit down properly? I haven't followed these cars for years; I have some of all - somewhere. 

For my electric short line I use a mix of cars. They are all weathered and look old. In pictures of mining railroads I have found the roads ordered their cars in batches from different companies so no set looks alike. Also they bought second hand cars sometimes to expand their fleet. For me I think they look good that way. Don

Following another member's lead I swapped out some K-line ore car trucks with Weaver plastic trucks which lowered the ore cares and made them look much better.  I don't have many, 3 or 4 K-line ore cars and one Lionel, GN ore car.  It is smaller than the K-line, but since I only have the one I do run it with the K-line cars.

I mixed as many brands as I could find when building my ore train:

(this video is 10 years old...I really need to re-shoot it--also have closer to 70-75 of these now.)

The K-Line/RMT cars are clones of the Atlas cars (much like Menards' boxcars are clones of Williams boxcars), only difference being the number of mold gates on the underside of the car. The reason they sit so high is when K-line commissioned their version, the engineers in China copied the Atlas truck mount exactly with no thought given to ride height with the arch-bolstered tinplate trucks.

It might be theoretically possible to CAD up a 3D-printed truck mounting plate that does away with the downward projection around the screw hole, allowing these cars sit a little lower (but not as low as the original Atlas trucks--you need a flat-bolster to do that).

The Lionel cars are about a quarter-inch narrower, supposedly mimicking a smaller-capacity prototype. I don't know about the die-cast versions, but suspect they are the same dimensions. Viewed from the side, you wouldn't know which was which in a moving train.

---PCJ

The "other" train magazine did a nice feature story comparing the various ore cars. I know I saved the article, but I can't seem to find it right now. The ore cars that were compared were from K-Line, MTH, the older Atlas O model and the two Lionel ones: The plastic and die-cast body versions.

The nicest thing about the article were all the comparison photographs from the ends and from the sides. As others have mentioned, the plastic Lionel ore car is narrower than the others, but also sits lower. It is overall, a little bit smaller which is why I prefer the Lionel plastic ore cars over the others.

There ARE differences between the plastic body and die-cast body Lionel ore cars, most notably that the couplers stick out much further on the die cast cars. I'm going by memory here, but seems to me there were also size differences along with details.

I never liked the K-Line ore cars for the reasons above that they ride too high. This of course is fixable by doing some grinding on the frame where the trucks are mounted. Or using another truck as suggested above, like the Weaver ones.

The article claims the K-Line ore car was from new tooling, but sometime ago someone here, on another ore car thread, chimed in that the K-Line ore car was in fact the former Atlas ore car, which does seem plausible in that Atlas has never reissued the ore car under their more recent O scale efforts.

As I recall, the MTH ore car was missing some details of the others, but certainly did not ride high like the K-Line ore car. When the K-Line ore car was made again by RMT, I have no idea whether the truck mounting in the plastic frame was changed, but RMT's truck (very similar to the last K-Line Train 19 truck) is not as high as the normal K-Line die-cast and plastic trucks.

I used to have some of the Lionel plastic and Atlas ore cars but sold off most of them. I was hoping Atlas O would make the PRR g38/g39 ore jennies but alas, to no avail. I guess I will have to learn how to scratch build them from styrene and use shot for weight.