Accurail screw sizes

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

Got yet another one for my Froum friends. This one hould be fairly simple. I am kitbashing a boxcar to match a prototype. I am using parts from an Accurail underframe and need to know what length are the screws that attach both the trucks and the cover covers. I got the underframes and details for a different project that never got off the ground but there were no screws. I looked up a copy of a generic instruction sheet but no lengths were given.

As usual, any assistance that can be provided would be most welcomed.

2

5/32”. This is the shank length of screws contained in an Accurail 40” wooden stockcar kit #1206.
Cheers, the Bear.[:)]

3

Many Accurail kits “infamously” used those press-in plugs that fit either too tight or too loose. Yours may have been sized for those plugs.

I keep tins full of various sized screws I’ve collected over the years so I can’t say exactly what sizes I used on which particular Accurail car at the time.

I generally used a screw with a wide head and plastic-gripping threads (kind of like a sheet metal screw) as opposed to a machine screw as I would for a Kadee.

Same with the press-fit coupler boxes. [N] I’d completely remove them and use the appropriate Kadee draft gear.

Good Luck, Ed

4

Same here.

This is how I do it on an Athearn Blue Box kit. I think an Accurail kit would be very similar.

-Kevin

5

For securing trucks, I use 2-56 screws, rather than the plug-in plastic ones. Many of my older Accurail cars used the push-in plastic coupler covers, too, and in most cases, they work well and stay in place, and can be removed and re-used if a coupler needs to be replaced.
For pretty-well all types and brands of rolling stock, 2-56 screws work well for mounting trucks.

For Athearn cars, the clip-on metal covers for couplers work very well, provided that the sides are at 90º to the face of the cover.

For more recent Accurail (and other) offerings, the coupler covers are screw-mounted, and my more recent ones, regardless of manufacturer, use flat-head 1-72 screws, or, when necessary 2-56 flat-heads.
I use a numbered drill bit which matches the size of the screw’s head, in a pin vise, to create a countersink so that the screws’ heads are not visible when the cars are on-layout.

Here’s a Proto stockcar with Kadee couplers in Kadee draught gear boxes, secured with partially counter-sunk flathead screws…

…and an older Accurail car with the press-in coupler cover held in place with a screw…

This little MoW car, an MDC old-time tender…

…uses countersunk flathead screws to hold the car’s body to its underbody, and to hold two different Kadee draught-gear boxes in-place…

If you have screws of a suitable diameter, plus a nut with compatible threads, you can convert the too-long screw into one of a more appropri

6

I was guessing somewhere around 1/8" so I was close. Thank you.