Athearn 40' hopper couplers

[bigdawgks]

I've picked up a 40' 3 bay hopper from Athearn and I want to replace the couplers with micro-trains ones, but it appears they have not made it easy. They have included cast coupler boxes on the metal underbody for their couplers that are both unnecessarily too far forward and won't fit a MTL coupler without modification.


So my question is what techniques others may have used to convert these cars. I am aware that these cars are modified from earlier Roundhouse tooling and since I am going to repaint this car anyway, I am wondering if it's worth while to just seek out an example from the earlier tooling instead of bothering with Athearn's "improvements."

PS: I am also looking for advice on how to remove the cast metal underbody from the plastic carbody. It seems like it might be held on with pegs protruding through the underbody and glued in place.

[mplsjct]

My vote for worst “upgrade” ever, the body mounted couplers were apparently designed to maintain the ridiculous coupler distance of the previous truck mounted couplers!

I only purchased one of the latest Athearn cars, in CB&Q, disgusted by this lame upgrade, I filed the coupler box off, then body mounted a regular accumate coupler in its place ( I know most people don’t care for Accumate, but the rest of the cars in the coal train I was assembling used them, so this car got them too).

Mysteriously, the “g” in the large  Burlington lettering was different than previous runs of this car.

[nkalanaga]

That is one of my complaints with McHenry couplers in general:  They seem to be designed to prevent the use of MT couplers.  Atlas body-mount Accumate boxes, at least on the cars I've checked, are designed to accept 1015s without modification.  Why couldn't Athearn do that?

Accumates will fit McHenry boxes, and I have plenty of spare Accumates, but that doesn't help the coupling distance on the cars in question.  As Mplsjct says, the best bet is probably to remove the entire box and install a new coupler.  Hopefully the top of the box is thick enough that there will be a platform left to mount the new one.

[thomasjmdavis]

Looking at the photo, it looks like they just added a McHenry box on top of the old Roundhouse weight casting. So between the two, it should be thick enough.  The old Roundhouse castings even had a dimple in the back side, which appears to be the drill center for body mounting a coupler. And the dimple is set back, not right on the very end of the car, as shown in the photo of the Athearn.

[bigdawgks]

Yes, that dimple still exists on the top of the casting, there are only 2 problems;
1. The existing box and support rib behind it would need to be removed with some very careful and tedious filing
2. The dimple is on the top, and I can't drill it with the body attached. I still don't know how to separate the two pieces without damaging them.

Makes me wonder why they even left it there. Athearn's decisions on this "upgrade" are very baffling.

[peteski]

Makes me wonder why they even left it there. Athearn's decisions on this "upgrade" are very baffling.

To Athearn the reasons are crystal clear:

1. There is a trend in N scale to body mount couplers
2. Athearn exclusively produces McHenry couplers, cramming them into every N scale model they make.

Those to things add up  to body-mounted McHenry couplers.