Finally got one of these babies in the mail and they are pretty nice. My plan was to suck in the couplers, lower it a bit and give it the old weathering. First thing I did was remove a coupler mounted truck and replace it with one sans coupler. With it on the rails I backed a MT coupler height gauge up to it to see just how much it could be lowered, the distance from the gauge to the underside of the body is the amount I can remove from the bolster height. I took care of that with a file making sure to keep the file square with the underframe since the trucks will rest here and hold the car straight. Now to the couplers, MT 903's with the rear of the box removed. In the area where the coupler box backs up against the bolster you need to remove some material. I filed back the edge of the bolster till there was just enough plastic left to still hold the truck pin. Every thousandths of a inch counts. Drilled out the underframe for the coupler screw, didn't tap it because it's so thin. The screw will make it's own threads. After mounting the trucks and couplers I gave it a spin on a oval of MT track and noticed the wheels rubbed the coupler box. This is the first time this happened for me, maybe because the bolster is correctly spaced with the end of the car. So I nicked the outer most edges of the coupler boxes with a cut off wheel. The area I'm talking about is where you melt the box together. This little nick got the wheels to spin freely and my layout curves are a hair bigger than MT track so I should be fine. Before: After: The shiney plastic will shown up better in photo's once it's weathered, but you get the idea. Later after weathering I will take a overall shot to better show the lowering and if I remember I'll take photos of it being weathered too.
Chriss, If there is one car that needs body mounted couplers, it is the MTL PS-2. I cannot push it over a turnout without derailing. Good job, and keep the pictures coming.
John, I remember you saying that...do you think more weight would help? If you wiggle and pull on the trucks the whole lower half of the body should come out. What weight there is, is sort of high up. Maybe some small lead BB's down in the hopper shutes? You could just tape a few pennies to the roof first I'd guess, to see if it would help or not.
John, I noticed that being pulled through marklin tournouts either way was not a problem for me. However, when I pushed them through I would have some prblems. Basically it seems like their was too much swivel (I don't know it that is a word!) in the trucks, so they would just turn all over the place. When I painted the trucks a shade of grimey black, because I hated the brown look, I got a nice suprise, the paint kinda added some friction and the swivel was minimized and now I have no derailments. Perhaps you could add a little tape to the top of the trucks to get the same thing. Just make sure they are not so tight that they won't turn. It just seems like you can't get the pin that holds the trucks in place deep enough to tighten, so maybe tape on the top will do it?
I been thinking about the truck swivelling problem, and wonder. Could it be because the body mounted coupler have slot pins that prevent them from swivelling too much. Joe, I will try your suggestion first, before attempting a body mount conversion.
If you think the pin is the problem you could drill the hole deeper. Or even thread it and use a screw. When I removed some of the bolster, I then had to deepen the hole some to get back to where it was in depth. The body mount pins are different, but I think the trucks can still swing as far as needed with them. Didn't MT say they were going to all truck mounted couplers?...Boo
Here is another shot to better shown what exactly I did under there: Trimmed the bolster back to the yellow line and removed some height from it as well. The back of the coupler box is gone. And the areas in red are what I ground away to get wheel clearance I needed. This coupler was in the parts bin, hence the remnants of paint on it.
First of all, really nice work, Chris. Second, I have been noticing a couple of problems lately with MT Trucks. The first is with the bolster pins. Many of them are not inserted far enough, this leads to excessive wabble and derailments. I have had this problem on several of my recent MT purchases (PennZee and Full Throttle, as well). The other problem (which is harder to fix) is primarily with the Bettendorf trucks. The wheelsets fit very loose in the truck. In some cases, the wheels will drop out with very little provocation. In the past, this was usually a sign that the truck frame was split at the bolster pin. Now, however, this is not the case. It just seems like the truck frames are sprung. I can usually just remove the wheel sets and press the frames together for a bit and the wheels will fit better, but I don't know how long this will work for, or if the frames will eventually return to their original shape. Dan S.
Dan, I have the same problem. The pin are just too big, and won't go in far enought. I usually take them out, and shorten the pins. I also have the same problem with the loose truck frames. I also try to push them back together. The problem is that some of them will go back to the original shape, and the wheels gets suck into the black hole of parts. Maybe we should let Joe know about the current problems with the trucks.
I never really had a major problem with the wheels falling out, but they can be removed with very little effort, sometimes just bumping the car the wrong way. Z is small and my fingers are big. For the pins, this car's frame was plastic so I drilled the hole deeper. This let the pin push in all the way. I have a reamer to touch up the hole after drilling. And test fit the pin since friction holds it. If the car's frame is metal or maybe a flatcar or gondola where I wouldn't want to drill through. Then I also shorten the pins a little bit. I have never tried screws, but it should work if needed.
OK 6am here, I worked night turn. Weathering. Trucks and couplers were painted with grimey black. Wheel faces were painted a rusty color, something like grimey black, rust, rail brown, and roof brown all mixed together. Gave the body a light wash of India ink/alcohol, heavy wash on the roof and underframes. Added just a touch of rust colored powder to the same mix and hit the roof again, gave it a slight brownish look instead of gray from the ink. Drybrushed the trucks couplers/underframe and body with dirt colored craft store paint. To drybrush I squirt a bit a paint down, lightly dab the brush in it. Now i work it around on a dark colored surface, like left of cardboard sprayed with flat black. Working the brush around this way lets me see when there is just a very little bit of paint left (the brush is dry) Now I work the brush around on the model. The paint will just hit raised details and leave a slight haze elsewhere. It's a great way to make rivets pop out at you! Here the idea was to give it the look of dirt being thrown up on the car, you could do the same thing with rust colored paint. Any dirty color will do, use a few if you like. If you've got some spare shells laying around, spray them flat black and practice. I say black because this will let you see your drybrushing color better and give you an idea what the paint is doing. Now like always with me I try to not go overboard...why? I model the Erie, a railroad that was no more in 1960 (merged with DL&W to make EL) This PRR H34a PS-2 covered hopper was built in 1955: http://prr.railfan.net/freight/classpage.html?class=H34 So for my layout the oldest the car could be is 5 years. Here is everything layed out. Small parts held with tweezers, body held with a block of foam: At this point everything (except the wheels) have a dose of Dullcoat to keep my big fingers from rubbing everything off. Once it dries I'll assemble and see if it needs any finishing touches.
Thanks Jurg. I actually did pretty bad at English back in high school. I know how can I do bad in English when it is the language I speak! So it's good to hear that what I type makes some sense. Hooray for spell checker:w20z6q: Couldn't wait to put it back together.
Was not so long ago....................... That PS2 looks awesome! Very nice weathering job! Last year, if you would have asked me if I was going to weather any of my rollingstock or locomotives, I would have told you NO (and Jeffrey White would have confirmed my answer), but now, seeing all of the amazing weatheirng effects being done to Z rollingstock, I have slowly been changing my mind. So much so, I had a large pack of Bragdon chalks in my hand while visiting the local Hobbytown, Saturday. Due to $$$ constraints, I chose not to get them at this time! Soon! India ink too! Your weathering and modifications look great! Hobo Tim
The lowering and weathering look great! The lowering project was my favorite part, but your weathering tecnique looks worth giving a try also! I don't have any of these cars either, but my wife built 40 of the 70 Ton ACF style, and they are ready for painting if I ever get around to it. :shade:
Now that Zscalemonster is all out of these. I bid on a 3 pack a few days ago (Think it was Tim selling) I got out bid in the last 10 minutes. I think you effectively created a collectors item, er' 40 of them.
Newby here trying to remove my 1st set of trucks, is this a screw or a plug? How do I remove it? Don't want to break it on my 1st attempt.
