New / Old car heights trucks

[Sherwood]

I would like to revisit the changes in the Bachmann car heights, couplers, trucks - I had seen references previously to new lowered cars accomodating center shank couplers, either indicating that the old cars had been re-issued with new trucks with the reduced bolster spacer boss on the original trucks, or that the new cars had different frames to accomplish the lowering.  I had not bought or seen the lowered cars and there seemed to be some confusion over how one would know which a new purchase would be.

Recently I bought a few pulpwood cars to go with the Forney and found both changed coupler box and bolster detail, and a new low archbar truck.  I do like the new look, although something targetting a 2' foot prototype seemed to be the wrong place to introduce what appear to be 3' sideframes with spacers to allow the 31" wheels.  I know this would be easier to convert to On3, but this would seem to be a less attractive compromise for 2 foot gage, and it takes away some of the "hunkered down" look that has to do with how far the truck is tucked underneath, not just how low the car is. 

I tried swapping the trucks onto an older car, and there are some issues with bolster height and boss diameter / spacers - its not a straight swap.

My questions are two:

Are the new cars of other types now coming with the same modified frame and low truck as the Pulpwood, or are they just the old tooling with reduced truck bolster thickness?

There was a previous question as to whether we might be able to buy a replacement frame and trucks to convert cars to lower the cars, whether this woud match the Pulpwood car or not - any further news?

[OldStone]

I'm told that all new cars will now have the "hunkered-down  look".
Cheers,  OldStone    O & W RR

[the Bach-man]

Dear Sherwood,
Again we agree, and again I've been lobbying...
Have fun!
the Bach-man