--- In STMFC@..., Richard Hendrickson <rhendrickson@o...>
wrote:

John Riddell recently alerted me to the fact that Life-Like Canada has
recently issued some new HO scale trucks which are intended

primarily for

their Dominion box car models but are also available separately.

John sent

me some for evaluation, and they arrived in today's mail.

The model trucks are described as "1934 AAR trucks with Simplex

bolsters"

and carry L-L Canada part number 212560. They're like other L-L

Proto 2000

trucks, with sharply molded one-piece frames in engineering plastic
(although they don't have molded-on brake shoes) and die-cast metal
rib-backed wheels on nylon axles.

These new trucks represent ARA/AAR cast steel trucks with integral

journal

boxes, spring planks, and Simplex bolsters. Aside from the bolsters,
they're typical of many 40 and 50 ton trucks used on North American

freight

cars from the early 1920s through the early 1950s. The bolster ends are
distinctive, as they are flat rectangles with prominent "SIMPLEX"

lettering

molded into them, but Simplex bolsters were widely used in both the U.S.
and Canada, and a bit of work with a file would modify them to represent
other types of solid-end bolsters.

As there are few good HO scale replicas of cast steel trucks from

this era

with
spring planks - the only ones I know about are made by Accurail and

Model

Die Casting, and the MDC trucks represent an uncommon prototype -

these new

trucks from L-L Canada are a significant addition to the available

HO scale

truck options. I don't know whether they will be available from L-L
dealers in the U.S., so it may be necessary to smuggle them into the
country from Canada, where the current price is equivalent to $3.25 USD.

Richard H. Hendrickson

While these trucks are truely wonderful to behold and long overdue for
us Canadian modelers, a friend of mine bought some of these trucks a
couple of months ago for his Westerfield Fowler kits and discovered to
his dismay that the truck bolster is much higher than convention.
Filing the top of the truck bolster enough to allow the model to sit
down at the correct height would have removed the internal flange that
the truck mounting screw rests against. It appears that for whatever
reason Life Like as produced a truck which only mounts on their cars.
Pierre Oliver
http://www.elgincarshops.com/