An N-Possible journal

[GaryHinshaw]

Time for some CanCon.

Atlas NSC 50' plug door box car:  This set of cars was quite perplexing at first, but all's well that ends well:



I converted 4 of the 5 cars with a scale box and short shank; for the 5th I used a urs conversion in the extended draft gear.  But see this post first for an issue with how the weight is attached to the floor.  Also beware of some iffy quality control; for example, one of my cars had a track damaged beyond repair and a bolster that wouldn't seat properly because of some excess material at the end of the centre sill:




The former required a truck swap, the latter was easily fixed by trimming some material off the centre sill with a razor blade.

Scale box conversion:  The draft gear and bolster are a single piece held in place by the inner screw shown here:



For the scale box conversion I removed this piece and cut the draft gear off the bolster with a single edge razor:




I also sliced the screw post off the floor, then re-attached the bolster.  The scale box is screwed directly to the floor with no hat:



I swapped the trucks for BLMA 100T trucks and added a 0.4 mm washer to get the coupler height correct.  (I only did the truck swap because the original wheels were weird and FVM replacement wheels looked odd in the stock trucks.  Personal preference.)  The car spacing with a short shank is a bit over 3 scale feet, which is a tad on the close side.  I like the look of the close coupling, but you may prefer a medium shank.

URS conversion:  The prototype QC box had extended draft gear, so I tried using the part Atlas supplies with these cars.  I'm kind of mezzo-mezzo on the result: the couplers function well, but extended draft gear looks a bit clunky.  Here are the steps I took: remove the stock bolster/draft gear but retain the screw post for the replacement bolster (supplied in the jewel case).  The urs splitter installs in the lid of the draft gear, and a short shank coupler works well here:





I may convert this last car to a scale box, or I may try to print a better extended draft gear fixture.  In the meantime, this works fine and I love the green Pacman scheme (never mind that these cars may never have touched a rail over Tehachapi...).

[peaks]

A neat job! Thanks for sharing.

[garethashenden]

I’m sure a custom 3d printed extended box would be better, but I don’t really think it would be a total fix. It’s an awkward situation, we kinda need an extra long coupler so that the pivot can be under the car body. That would allow the draft gear to be dimensionally correct. But it would limit swing.

[lock4244]

... In the meantime, this works fine and I love the green Pacman scheme (never mind that these cars may never have touched a rail over Tehachapi...).

Challenge accepted. Not the loop and not a multimark, but a QC car in Mojave means it's a near certainty that they've ridden the loop. I think everything in general interchange service will have wound up everywhere a relatively busy mainline goes eventually.

https://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=5008370

[Missaberoad]

They lasted into the 2010s aswell, Just need to weather the snot out of it!

[cnw780]

Sure, here is a shot of the Cotton Belt hopper A end:


 
For reference, the screw is a 3.5 mm M1.2 screw.  You could probably also use a 3 mm screw here just as well.  I am pleasantly surprised with how robust these covered hopper installations are.  I've had no problems with either stripped threads in thin plastic, nor with box twist.

Thank you.  I see the screws are not too visibly obtrusive and with some close matching paint they should disappear nicely.

~Tim

[GaryHinshaw]

https://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=5008370

Excellent!!  Well done.  And yes, the QC car will definitely need to be weathered, maybe something like this. 

One other fun fact: the left two cars in the first pic are UNPX 851013 and YARR 4530.  According to https://www.rrpicturearchives.net/, UNPX 851013 became YARR 4529, so it's likely those two cars in the shot never existed at the same time.   

[GaryHinshaw]

I’m sure a custom 3d printed extended box would be better, but I don’t really think it would be a total fix. It’s an awkward situation, we kinda need an extra long coupler so that the pivot can be under the car body. That would allow the draft gear to be dimensionally correct. But it would limit swing.

I know that Andrew has received requests for something along these lines.  It's hard for me to guess what the best commercial solution might be.

[BCR 570]

the left two cars in the first pic are UNPX 851013 and YARR 4530

Those are ex-BCR cars built by NSC 1980.

Tim

[jpwisc]

Another super easy conversion. The ESM USRE Class X72 Boxcar using the 101-URS-K
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[milw156]

Any recommendations for the various spacers being used for those of us without access to a 3D printer? for that matter, has anyone designed a body mount conversion for Intermountain 4750's like what Trainworx has for the former Precision Masters/Red Caboose/FVM cars?
Rick

[GaryHinshaw]

I'm afraid I don't have a good source for custom washers and bushings.  For better or worse, I am increasingly finding 3d printing to be indispensable to my modelling.  The following overly-long example is a case in point....

I have been mostly retiring my IM 4750's in favour of the Tangent models, but not entirely.  I will be drawing up a conversion part for the ones that remain, but I'm not sure when.  In any case, it will be a 3d printed part.  Do you know anyone with a printer?  Do you have access to a maker lab nearby?

[GaryHinshaw]

ExactRail Thrall 3564 gondola

I have a bunch of these and I'll admit that I struggled a bit with the best approach, but I'm finally happy with the outcome:



I invite  you suffer through the full journey with me below , but the TLDR version is a scale box install with a short shank coupler.  The trucks are either the stock ER trucks or BLMA/Atlas 100T trucks, either with some custom washers and bushings to get the correct coupler height:





Here is a link to the TinkerCAD file for the truck washer and bushing.  Now for the gory details....

There were two versions of this car: an early truck-mount version and a later body-mount version.  The body tooling is (as far as I can tell) identical between the two, but they glued/screwed a coupler box to the body in the later version, and used a different truck.  One option with the later version is to use a medium shank coupler in the stock box with a URS splitter:



This works but it's not ideal because the box is snug and you can't fully tighten the box lid without restricting the coupler motion, and the medium shank doesn't look great on this model.  (And of course it doesn't work for the truck-mount version.)  Despite these issues, I was continuing on this path until I came across a stock box that was mounted at an angle:



  That's when I decided I needed another approach.  When Andrew came by in September he gave me some prototype "Kato boxes" to try out.  They are designed for loco conversions (and they're great for that) but they also work in other situations.  I decided to pop the stock boxes off and try these boxes in there place using the screw from the stock box to mount the new box into the same screw hole:




This box with the thin lid works well; it suffers a bit from the same medium-shank-look-problem, but I could have lived with that.  But then I came across a few cars where the screw hole had been stripped in the factory (the box was only attached with glue).  So, in disgust, I set the whole project aside for a while to work on other cars.

In the intervening time, I had ordered some shorter 3 mm M1.2 screws to try out and I had a few ER cars where the steel weight that comprises the floor of the model had come unglued .  I tried mounting a scale box on this car with a 3 mm screw and I found that the screw was exactly the right length to fully engage with the plastic subfloor while its tip sat just below the subfloor surface.  You can see it close to the end wall on this car:



I was impressed with how well the short screw gripped, so now I'm converting all the cars this way: scale box, short shank, 3 mm screw.  I need to drill a new hole a bit outboard of the stock hole on the body-mount cars, but it's not necessary to drill into the steel weight, which makes things much simpler:



And of course this works for both the truck-mount and body-mount cars:



I hope Scale Trains produces more of these cars some day...  BTW, these 3 mm screws are great for covered hopper installations as well: you get full thread coverage with no extra screw protruding above the floor of the car.

[Sokramiketes]

Per someone elses request, I took a look at the Kato GS-4.  Kato includes a wider pilot opening if you want to convert to an MTL 1015.  While the upcoming nP Kato/1015 box could work... it looks much cooler with a scale box in place. 

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There's a nice flat pad on the back of the tender if you want to drop another scale box back there. 

[Sokramiketes]

Intermountain NSC 4550 Canadian Cylindrical hoppers.  Scalebox short, no hat, and BLMA/Tangent trucks.  Much improved appearance and ride height.

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