This is fascinating. A couple of weeks back, in another topic, I had mentioned having a bit of trouble with an FVM caboose. Good grief. Yes. When they first came out with the Milwaukee Road bay window cabooses. I bought several. I finally got around to using one on my mini-T-Trak empire. It did a lot of shaking, as it passed around the loop. Wobbling on several switches. I discovered it was not track issues, but it was derailing and re-railing itself. This week I sat down at the modeling workbench, to see what was happening. Well, one truck was not swinging at all. OK. I thought the bolster pin might be pressed in rather firmly. I'll just wiggle it very gently upward with my screwdriver. No go. It would not budge.There was no way I could get any close in visual as to why. So I tried a slightly more firm pry. POP. The pin head broke off. But the truck did not move. What the...??? So then I had to pry on that assembly, grimacing all the way. It finally came loose. It was then that I discovered they had GLUED the bolster pins in place. The reason was apparent. A design flaw. There was a metal washer in there, which was necessary due to the fact without it, the wheels rub the floorboards. Wonderful. My guess is after adding the washer, the pins did not seat solidly enough, so then came the idea of gluing. And somehow they glued that one truck in the process. Sloppy workmanship. I was able to clean up the frame bolster. And made a truck bushing from a spare Micro-trains pin. Instead of trying to drill out the broken pin portion, I drilled and tapped for a screw. Now I have a working caboose. But what a pain in the lower anatomy!
Interesting........I pulled 5 of mine apart after reading this (4 bay window and one transfer), and none of mine were glued........they did have the metal washers you mentioned. I don't remember how I bought them, but they are 4 totally different cabooses.........one is black roof yellow end and a second stack of some sort on the roof, one is black roof orange end , one is orange roof orange ends, and the 4th is MOW brown. If I did the same with the cabooses as I did with the FVM ribside boxcars, I bought 1 from each new release, so these are spread over several releases. Not sure why yours was glued......mine all popped out with just a medium tug on the truck, no prying required. Good solution for the repair.
