The side rods are indeed plastic but they look pretty good to me. Like you said the boxcars match up really well to MTH or Aristo but are a bit of a stretch for LGB. I suppose if you had an LGB engine and a freight set of just Piko cars it wouldn't be so bad but mixing and matching would definitely show the difference. Im pretty happy with this BR 64 so far , I just happened to have 5 LGB streamline cars on my track when it arrived so i hooked it up to see how it would pull. It had no problem with those heavy cars so Im confident Ill have no problem towing three or four of the Piko passenger cars that go with this. The shop I purchased this from has a sale today so Im seriously considering buying the Krocodile next. If so Ill take a few pictures of that also.