I am looking to see if anyone has been successful in removing the weights from the Deluxe Innovations 53' trailers? I tried to put 19 trailers onto my BLMA spine cars and the 3 Dash 9's I brought with could not pull it. Considering I have two storage boxes of spine cars and more then a box of just DI's 53' trailers I would like to try to lighten them up so I can run most or all of my spine cars on the same train. I know that the road railers I converted to OTR have the weights, but most of the ones that were decorated and sold as OTR have the weights too. I am confident it is not the spine cars, they have been given a once over several times and they ran great for almost 6 hrs yesterday once I swapped the trailers out for MT and Atlas ones. Thanks, Lee
I have take the weights out of all my DI's. Take the roof off, take the underframe off. Drill a approx. 1/8" hole thru the floor, it will stop when you hit the weight. Use a punch to push the weight off. Some of the snot Dave used is pretty strong, have not hurt anthying yet. Bob.
Bob, How did you get the roof to come off? I tried and gave up before I caused damage to the trailer. Thanks
GENTLY twist the body holding on each end. The roof should pop loose. Do not try to dig it out, it will not work. I don't remember if any of mine were glued in but I would bet not. Bob.
If the roof is glued on or cannot be removed by flexing the trailer body, I have successfully removed a few of them with a little extra push on the punch that was used to free the weight from the glue holding it to the trailer floor. Basically, once the weight is free from the trailer floor, additional pressure on the weight via the punch results in a fairly equal distribution of pressure on the roof from inside the trailer body. In my case, the roofs just popped off with this little extra pressure from within. Carter
lee i think the problem is not with the trailers. must be something else. did you check if the wheels of the spine cars don't rub on the frame or trailers ? i assume these are kato dash-9. these things should pull far more than 19 spine cars. i'd estimate approx 65-70 spine cars. are all of them powered ? is one of them running in reverse ? are all of them running ? did you try the spine cars with other engines ?
No, the DI 53' trailers have weights in them. The techniques Bob and Carter described worked for me too. I mentioned this to Dave at DI a year or two ago, and he took a note to have them made without the weight in the future. Sadly, I am skeptical we will ever see these trailers run again. This is a huge gap in the N scale intermodal inventory.
I have only had time to try it on a couple trailers, one popped off with ease and the other had a bit of glue and came off with a bit more twisting. Worked like a champ, thanks again for the tips!
strange. i do run coal trains with 84 cars weighted at 47gramms each with only two dash-9 in front. can hardly believe 3 will not pull 19 loaded spine cars.
