I've already gone through a fairly full program of lowering my MT flatcars and gondolas significantly by hacking off the entire bolster part of the frame and replacing it with a lower styrene one glued right to the deck. No sill at all between the bolster and the original frame behind the wheel. Although that seems a little nuts, its worked very well and looks fantastic, and gets around the entire problem of machining the bolster because you cut it off. On a flat you can't see the missing sill. Boxcars, on the other hand, have not been attacked. Well, that just changed. First up was what I think was an easy fix - the 40' plug doors. No sliding doors to get in the way. On these, my approach was equally stupid, rather than fight the frame and bolsters, lets drop the entire floor into the body about .030. How? Start running an Xacto knife edge around the car, cut and carve that 'shelf' deeper on the body, until you get there. You don't have to be machine perfect. When you get it far enough, test-fit the frame, check it for straightness, and hit four corners with ACC. Total time, 30 minutes. OK, on to the next car.... This shows the exact same body shell, before and after. Man, what a difference. I know others have done this, but I'm still amazed how much 'bang for the buck' appearance you get without messing with wheels or body-mounts to do it.
I've been doing that with some flats and did a lot of cutting and milling to get them down to the right height. I'd love to be able to go over all this old tooling and start dropping stuff, but not enough time or resources at the moment. It's been on my wish list forever. Joe
It is almost 5 scale inches lower with the 0.030" insetting of the floor. Most noticeable around the trucks and the distance from the stirrups to the rail. That makes me realize how much better code 40 rail would look. Help me, I'm being sucked into the vortex of "fine scale!"
The bolsters on the MTL gons don't appear to be a problem with BLMA 70T trucks, but some grinding of the frame is probably needed in order to clear the wheelsets. The couplers are then mounted directly to the bottom of the gondola floor to get them to the correct height. The stock stirrups will either need to be modified or replaced to clear the relocated coupler boxes.
That's all just way too much work for me and you have to buy more stuff to do it. I think one of the reasons that more people don't do it is that it sounds too hard and takes more than simple hand tools. My experiment, and wholesale attack on the entire MT flat and gondola fleet (anything with a floor) was to hack off the entire bolster end with either a hacksaw or abrasive disk and replace it with a bolster/sill of styrene just thicker than the coupler box itself, barely. You can see the high level of precision workmanship necessary!! You can body-mount if you want, I didn't. I cut the stirrups apart and goo'ed the remnants back. Trimmed the body up a bit on any car that caused coupler swing hangups. I made those styrene bolster strips up about a dozen at a time, drilled them out for pins (3/32), and went at it. I've looked at a bunch of things; body mounts, low-profiles, etc. Bluntly, other than on some stuff like tank cars, you can't see the wheels anyway after you lower the car to where it should be. My biggest visual and low-cost payoff for photos remains the car lowering program. I was just completely sold on that after I did a few of these. The 'oh, wow' was immediate. On some specific MT's it's a lot more obvious the car looks too high (the 40' plugs among them), the gondolas and flats all look high, especially the first time you see a car at the right height. I think my count on flats and gons is probably about 20, I've probably got another 20 of so boxes now I'm looking at. I'm not sure I'll do all, it's by worst-first. Over the next year, upgrading the freight car fleet is the major program, cast roofwalks, too-high cars, clunky thick covered hoppers, you're all on the 2016 hit list.
Body mounted couplers were one of the two objectives I had in mind where they would have been "extra work" on a car that didn't need to be lowered.
(Admittedly crappy cell phone) pic of MTL gon with older stock underframe (except for tapping bolsters to accept 2-56 screws), BLMA 70T trucks, and 1015 couplers Pic of underside, note that the older frame has more than enough space to mount the coupler to the underside of the gondola floor. I still need to grind some material from the frame near the innermost wheelsets and replace the stirrups
Ah-HAAA. OK, so remember I'm modeling July, 1972. Read the 'NEW Date". This would have been a rebuilt 40' box (roofwalk removed, ladders lowered) and painted in the billboard "Santa Fe" scheme,..... 3-72. So it's about three months since that new paint. MT got that right. It would not, however, have survived that rebuild program with a roofwalk in 1972. Same thing with the 50' DD in the back right. I weather the bejeesus out of the 'Route of the _____" cars (class of '49) and Santa Fe all the Way schemes, but the billboard Santa Fe came out in 72, so those that I have are all fresh paints. I've tried using a Dremel to redo the bolsters and it's too much work for me. I have a buddy that has a precision vertical milling machine and he does like 20 cars at a time. Unfortunately he's 240 miles out! So I'm Joe Hacksaw in Styrene Sillville.
I suspected that the lowering of a MTL 40' boxcar was the precursor to the weathering of a MTL 40' boxcar, but I guess this wasn't the case Regarding the gondola with BLMA trucks, it's just a matter of using the Dremel to "clean up" anything on the underframe that would scrape against the flanges.
OK, so here's the second one. And now that it's finally the right height, it was worth investing more time in to bring the weathering up to current standards.
I tried my hands at lowering today for the first time. I tried a MTL box car and it has a metal floor. I did some Dremel work and ended up with this after everything cleared. I was trying not to need a body mount or cut into the front of the box. I had to thin the top of the coupler and everything seems to clear. I have not run the car yet but visually I don't know if I am as low as the pictures I see here.
Looks good. I've had mixed results with a Dremel, it starts looking like that trim haircut that suddenly turns into a buzzcut. It's really hard to get that bolster top square and flat so that the car doesn't noticeably wobble when you are done. I'm doing a couple now just working with a good sharp mill file about a foot long to try to keep the bolster top flat and smooth. With the medium-profile flanges you have to take a lot less material down, too. Not every MT car is the same either, some body styles are a whole lot worse than others. I always thought the gons, flats, and 40' plugs were among the worst. They all run a little high, but some show it far worse than others.
OK, next experiment..... I've got two remaining MT TPIX bulkhead flatcars. Filed the bolsters down with a mill file, and chopped out right behind the bolster for wheel clearance, a little trim on the ends..... You can see the difference in height before and after. It's not that much, really, wondering if it was worth it.... Yeah, it's worth it.
Y'all are giving me some ideas. I like Life Like's "Northeastern" caboose, but it stands far too high above its trucks. Because of its walkways at each end, lowering it is a challenge, but I might try some of the techniques here. Here's Life Likes's designer.
