I see a lot of listings on Ebay for High Speed Metal Products cars. Are these usable, or are they only for static display? https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-10...boose&LH_BIN=1&_from=R40&rt=nc&LH_TitleDesc=0
They are crap and not useable without adding real trucks/couplers. Arguably the biggest recurring N scale ebay listing joke. Save your time and money.
I love the droopy Rapido couplers shown on the box photo. I run one of their cattle cars retrofitted with Microtrains trucks in the middle of my stock train at shows sometimes for fun. I feel rewarded when someone recognizes it for what it is.
You're a braver man than I Russell!! Sounds like new wine in old (and really crappy) wine skins......
Had 2 complete sets, given to me by a friend! Gave one set to someone at work, long ago, that wanted a set. Still have the other set somewhere. Might be suitable for distant background filler material only! If that!
Well, it was not that simple. You really have to want to do it. First you have to drill out the swedged bolster pins, remove the stock trucks, mill or file the bolster flat and drill an new hole to fit an MT truck pin. I then milled the floor out at the ends to clear the truck mounted coupler pocket so the truck could swing back and forth properly. If you body mounted couplers you may not have to do that. I then blackened the pot metal floor where I had machined it revealing the shiny metal underneath. But I do go to extremes for the "joke" value in things.
Russ and All, I have converted many of those readers digest cars as well somewhere on trainboard I posted a photo of a readers GP35 with a ATLAS / ROCO GP chassis. Also at one point between the introduction of these readers digest toys “N-SCALE” and 2000? I replaced a few of the readers digest caboose chassis with ATLAS a1g and BACHMANNS chassis which fit quite nicely. Tom
I also received some as a gift. The flatcars have trailers on them, which I found suitable for modeling with some changes. Just for fun, I attached MTL trucks to the bottom of the flatcar and it fit and ran just like any other cars. If you want to do a scene with a "repurposed" car, like a retired flatcar bridge or a retired tanker for a fuel tank, these will work fine. I also took the cab off the locomotive and used it in a scrapyard. If you're going to use them as actual train cars, they're awful, but with some work they can be fine for other modeling purposes. As an aside, I believe all of the High Speed cars were American prototypes, but they had a Japanese prototype "log car". I always thought that was odd.
Sometimes it's for something to do, yet a possibly to expand the freight car roster with what one has at the moment, yet here's one of my readers digest locomotives GP35-3/4 somewhat? Tom
And Here's one of my three Readers Digest cabooses with a ATLAS a1g Caboose under frame and painted it for the O. & W. I did it as a What if scheme... sorry about the first two photo's being upside down. Tom
I just found this on my piano. I had totally forgotten about it. If I remember correctly, my b-in-law gave it to me years ago. Don't know yet if I'll try to retrofit trucks or not. This thing is really light. It would definitely need some added weight.
