This past Monday, I finally got some time to do my hobbies, no chores, no “Honey dos”, no leaving town for work, just serious train playing. So I decided to get my latest acquisitions up to standard, and out on the railroad. As per the updated P&CS standards, revised late 2016, all new rolling stock is to have metal wheels, Kadee couplers and ball bearing inserts in the journals. And that is where I hit the first snag. In drilling out the journals on the USA show car trucks for the bearings, I got a tad aggressive and drilled clear through one of them.
(picture missing due to embarrassment)
Instead of wasting the truck side-frame, I went to my handy dandy secret weapon, JB Quick.
I carefully covered the hole in the journal, being careful to not let the JB get too far back into the hole and interfere with the axle or bearing.
Then, after it had mostly set up, I trimmed it flush with a hobby knife.
Then I coloured the gray JB weld with a Sharpie marker.
Then I added all the detail parts to the USA show cars. And there I hit the next “snag”.
In the drawings I have of boxcars and reefers of this type, the brake-wheel is usually around 18 inches ABOVE the roof-walk. The low brake-wheel on the USA cars has always bothered me. Now I could toss the perfectly good brass bake-wheel staff, But that would be a waste. So, I made an extension.
Its just a short piece of 1/16th brass rod, coloured with a Sharpie.
It fits at the bottom, between the bracket and holder, secured with a dab of Goop.
Then the USA brake-wheel/staff assembly is put in place, also secured with a dab of Goop.
Now that’s better. It looks like someday I will have to make a dozen of those for the cars already in service.
Then I moved onto the MTH car I bought. Oh no, I hit another snag. I cannot see anyway to add KaDees to the MTH truck.
After some head scratching, I decided to just replace the MTH trucks with USA trucks.
Here the car is sitting on one USA truck, and ne MTH truck, and then I found there was another snag. The wheel flanges in the USA truck were rubbing on a cross beam on the MTH car. So, with some hesitation, I modified the MTH car.
To disguise the ground down areas, I coloured them with my Sharpie too. You can also see the washer I put on the MTH car so the USA truck would swivel without snagging on the raised ribs on the MTH car’s bolster.
In retrospect I should have dug through my stash for the Piko trucks I know I have. The MTH car, and the Piko trucks are 1:32nd, where the USA truck is 1:24.
So now I have 3 more cars in my roster ready to run.
The 2 2017 ECLSTS show cars.
and the MTH Iron City reefer. Its funny but the Roberts meats car doesn’t say anywhere on the car that it was the show car for the 2017 ECLSTS. All of my other show cars are marked somewhere on the car that they are show cars. I wonder if that was an oversight, or an intentional omission.
When I went to run them I found that my LGB Mogul is DOA (Dead on it’s axles). Oh great! Another snag, and another project.
So I ran the new cars with my LGB Forney and Heartland bobber caboose.