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The older Lionel and some other later brands that copied the Trainmaster used six wheel trucks with blind wheels, as we all know.  This allowed them to negotiate tighter curves.  There have been, in recent years, power trucks that have the blind drivers between the flanged ones.  Browsing through Ebay and suppliers, I am trying to learn the when, where and why of the newer design.

Being somewhat anal about certain things, the older design always bothered my brain.  Running on larger radii, all appears fine.  But on O31 the overhang is visible.  

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Yeah, the blind-3rd-axle and "off-center center" of this design can look pretty odd, even on 072. MTH has used it (on my PS-1 ICG SD40, I believe); maybe everybody has used it. I get it, but what these designs actually were (back to the "off-center center"), were 4-axle trucks with a fake "wheel/axle-decoration" hanging off the end.

As long as the blind wheel is in the middle of the truck I'm fine with it. The overhang isn't even noticeable on my layout. It's when the blind wheels are next to the fuel tank I am bothered. Even on my wide curves they hang over in excess of a quarter inch, so I can imagine what it would it would look like on an O-54 curve! I will also add that I am not a fan of Lionel's new truck design with flanges on every wheel, they fit very loosely in the trucks and it lets the engines move back and fourth quite a bit, sometimes even causes the pickup rollers to drop into turnouts leading to derailments.  I had to glue styrene strips in all of my atlas turnouts to keep it from happening. 

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