What commercially-available rolling stock are you equipping with ESM wheels?

[amato1969]

Sidebar — I change the trucks on the InterMountain AAR boxcars to either (Atlas) Barber S-2A or (Atlas/BLMA) ASF A-3, depending on the prototype.  I never was fond of the original trucks that came with the boxcar and reefer kits.

Agreed - those generic IM trucks suck!

  Frank

[MetroRedLine]

I currently have ESM wheels on the following rolling stock:

Jacksonville Terminal Co. 53' NSC single well car, 9-post (9202)

Jacksonville Terminal Co. 53' NSC single well car, 17-post (9202)

Athearn 50' FMC Box Car (9202)

Walthers 70' Cryogenic reefer (9202) ** Note: Model comes with incorrect Bettendorf-style trucks, but ESM wheels fit and spin freely, though a little loose - If car is pressed down onto track, axles can pop out of sideframes. I initially put on FVM .553" and they do not spin.

[sundowner]

So far
920200
Rapido Procord GP20 Tank Car
Micro Trains DODX 60’ tank flats
Micro Trains  NSC 60’ Boxcar “TBOX”


920201
Exact Rail Trinity 6275 boxcar “FBOX”
Exact Rail Trenton Work 67’11” Bulkhead flat
Exact Rail Thrall 2743 gondola
Exact Rail Thrall 3564 gondola

[bbussey]

I forgot about the Rapido GP20 tankcars. I made that same wheel swap when I bought mine.

[garethashenden]

As expected 920201 36" wheels on .553" axles work wonderfully in Scale Trains PS 4785 covered hoppers.

[crrcoal]

Has anyone used these wheels in either the Atlas 90 ton hopper and the MTL 100 ton hopper?

[bbussey]

The Atlas hopper runs on undersized 33" wheels, so the straight swap would be 920101.  The MTL hopper would take 920200.

[crrcoal]

Thank you sir!!

The Atlas hopper runs on undersized 33" wheels, so the straight swap would be 920101.  The MTL hopper would take 920200.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

The story at the time was they (Robbman) drew up an N scale wheel profile

Oh man, have you talked to Robb lately? If so, how's he doing? That's a name I haven't heard in a minute.

[bbussey]

The ESM wheel charts are online but still woefully incomplete.  Still need to qualify a number of models.  Including but not limited to:

• Wheels of Time - head end passenger equipment
• Rapido Trains-  passenger equipment
• Scale Trains - freight equipment
• Deluxe Innovations - freight equipment
• Fox Valley Models - MILW passenger equipment; MILW caboose; transfer caboose
• Walthers - streamlined passenger equipment
• Bowser - freight equipment
• True Line Trains - freight equipment

[bigdawgks]

I can test out some ESM wheels on a few Rapido 8200 and 8600 coaches later tonight. I am not sure what axle lengths they use; I don't have any 36" wheelsets in .553 " axle lengths.

[bigdawgks]

So I pulled a wheelset out of one of my NH 8600 coaches and measured its length. It came in close to .52", noticably shorter than MTL axle length. This makes me suspect that the shortest available ESM axles may be too snug, but I haven't actually tried to swap one in. As for the 8200s, well I couldn't even get the Rapido wheelsets out of the trucks. Their axles seemed to extend further from the wheel hub than those on the 8600s, and subsequently sat deeper into the truck side frames. I will probably need to do some more thorough fiddling with those.

[bbussey]

The axle length in Rapido models vary from model to model.  The Canadian wheelsets are in between .540" and .553", while the meat reefers like the 8600s are shorter than .540".  The PBLW 8200s are similar to the 8600s.  The newer freight models such as the Procor tankcar and the SP boxcar appear to have standardized on the .540" axle length.