WELCOME TO THE NEW CASTLE INDUSTRIAL RAILROAD: FREIGHT CARS

This weekend I switched gears from layout construction to freight car upgrades. A change of pace is always good!

I decided to upgrade the trucks on my Weaver 50-foot boxcars. These cars look great when weathered and detailed!

One downer, however, is that the Weaver trucks do not have rotating roller bearing caps. Being a railroader, when I see a moving car with frozen bearings my first thought is that someone left a tight handbrake on! To remedy this problem, I decided to upgrade the cars using Lionel trucks and NWSL wheelsets. The conversion is very easy and simply involves flipping the carfloor. The Lionel trucks are built differently than Weaver's. Inverting the floor gives a flush mounting surface for the Lionel's. It just so happens that the resulting car and coupler height are dead-on the NMRA height gauge. No extra shimming is necessary.

I began by disassembling the car:

Then, I cut the bolsters from the center sill using a razor saw. I made sure to remove enough of the sill to allow the trucks to swing freely:

The ribbed side of the carfloor becomes the bottom; the smooth side becomes the top. I add small blocks of styrene over the truck mounting holes (see top of photo below). The styrene, when drilled and tapped, gives the mounting screws a little more bite. I drilled and tapped for 10-32 machine screws, then reattached the underframe assembly to the ribbed side of the car floor with ACC. Last was adding Kadee couplers and installing the trucks.

I insert 4mm lengths of 0.093 diameter styrene into the coupler spring to eliminate the caterpillar-like effect of the Kadee's. There is just enough slack action to create a realistic effect, while the coupler still moves side to side freely.

MTH produces some finely-detailed 1/48 scale freight cars, including these Plate F hi-cube boxcars.

These boxcars are dimensionally accurate and feature individual wire grabs, metal crossover platforms, and fine end rails & stirrups. The cars are only produced in 3-rail, but converting them to 2-rail is easy :-)

I use a number of these cars for paper service on my layout. I standardize with Lionel roller bearing trucks (the ones with rotating bearing caps) and Northwest Shortline 145 tread wheelsets. Here is a method I came up with for 2-railing my MTH cars:

Materials:

An MTH boxcar...Obviously ;-)

1 pair of Lionel roller bearing trucks

1 set of NWSL #8293-4 wheelsets (these are 36" wheels; 145 tread)

0.197 Acrylic Sheet

Epoxy

10-32 x 5/8 machine screws

Tools:

Small phillips-head screwdriver

Metal Punch & Hammer

Power Drill

3/32 Drill Bit

11/64 Drill Bit

10/32 Tap

Dremel Tool with Cut-off Disc

Process:

Disassemble the car by removing the 4 door-track screws and the 4 carbody screws. Remove the factory trucks.

Now cut small squares of .197 acrylic and epoxy to the top surface of the boxcar floor.

These squares will never be seen by humans (other than yourself) so they need not be pretty. They only need to cover the large bolster-hole while fitting between the screws. Cutting squares with tin snips makes the work fast and easy.

Once the epoxy sets, flip the car floor over and use a punch to mark the center of the large bolster hole.

I lucked out in that the diameter of my punch matches that of the hole...this makes marking the exact center of the hole very easy! I find that placing the boxcar floor on a scrap piece of 2 x 4 works well.

Now, drill a pilot hole using the small 3/32 bit.

Then, drill a larger hole with the 11/64 bit. Clean up any plastic shavings around the holes.

Cut threads into the holes by winding in a 10-32 tap. Take your time and be sure the tap is vertical.

Take the Lionel trucks and, using a Dremel, make two parallel cuts to get rid of the couplers. Loosen the sideframe screws and remove the Lionel hi-rail axles. Insert the NWSL axles, then re-tighten the screws. Make sure that the insulated side of the NWSL axles are all on the same side of the truck:-)