What should I do with my Post War Railroad Cars

Send them to me. Problems solved. 

What are the numbers on the cars?  Must have coil-couplers with staple-end trucks. If you do wanna get rid of them let me know.

bob

I use Atlas silver nickel; switches are a wee bit of a problem but for the most part they run through fine. How fast you are going makes a difference. One part of my layout is a separate loop and primarily for operating cars which are almost all sliding shoes. They get through4 switches regularly. Or as noted above there are people willing to jump on the grenade for you!

Send them to me and pay the shipping 

 I glue my shoes in the upright position. That way they are still there but do not cause operating problems. Since doing this I have had zero issues on my Ross switches and crossovers 

I have several postwar cars with coil couplers and I use Fastrack.  I have had no issues with shoes hanging up on the switches.  I did fix up a 6411 flat car to use as an idler with my S2.  I found that going through the curve of an 060 switch, the button of the shoe was at the right angle to touch the center rail and fire the coupler.  No problems through 072 switches or straight through to 060's.

No. problems with tubular track... I could help you if you want 

At what stage of layout building are you?  Just starting?  Doing everything over?

Also: What kind of track do you have now?  Do you have a big investment in any one kind of track?

What about the cars themselves What should I do with them?

For me, the answer is relatively easy: Run them on tubular O and enjoy them.

Steven J. Serenska

I have no issues on tubular track. As noted, other track systems have their quirks with complex sections and the shoes with varying workarounds that work 100% 60% of the time.

I have had some issues with Lionel 711 072 switches pulling the slide shoes off certain of my post war cars. I use the later 711 switches with the black plastic frog. The problem for me occurs with early post war flying shoe type and several of the redesign - but all made before 1950. Made after 1950 no problem so far. Finding a way to keep the shoes up is a good solution, but you would lose the function for which the shoes were intended.

Allan:

Jim Barrett did an OGR Backshop segment on modifying pick up shoes a number of years ago.  I'd be reasonably sure you could obtain that by contacting OGR.

The basic element of Jim's modification was to use either a Dremel rotary grinding tool or a file to angle the ends of the shoe. This enabled them to rise up and pass over blunt end guard rails in non Lionel switches,

Curt

Another point about these cars is some tend to uncouple when crossing lionel switches. This is caused by the flying shoe rivet sometimes being a tad too long. In this case carefully file it down until it no longer contacts the center rail of the switch as it passes over. Probably filing a slight angle on the shoe will help with getting snagged.

Rob

This is why Lionel tubular and 022 switches  have stood the test of time.