Trying to find assembly instructions for Proto 2000 10,000 Gal. Type 21 Riveted Tank Car. Got the box and all the “buts” but missing the instructions. rodcarr@carrsails.com
L-L_ACF_10K by Edmund, on Flickr
L-L_ACF_10K_0002 by Edmund, on Flickr
L-L_ACF_10K_0001 by Edmund, on Flickr
L-L_ACF_10K_0003 by Edmund, on Flickr
L-L_ACF_10K_0004 by Edmund, on Flickr
Lots of delicate parts but a beautiful model when completed!
Good Luck, Ed
There are a lot of detail parts that are just made from moulded styrene that will never survive even moderate use on an actual layout. Many grab handles, brake lines and steps (stirrups ) will even break as you handle the model during assembly.
I left much of the fine detail off after the second build (I bought five NIB model tank cars).
The instructions are very good. I misread them on my third tank car assembly (good memory, just short) and still managed to backtrack and salvage the model. Follow to the letter and all will become clear and straightforward. I recommend you carefully follow the very first instruction. That really does help.
I have a number of them to put together, that I boought when I thought I’d be laid up medically for a couple of weeks. Only managed a week. It’s been over 10 years and now a new layout comes first.
What was recommended to me by a dealer/modeler that had built a couple, was to get a reamer and slightly ream each hole for grabs and other fine parts. I lost quite a few grab irons trying to get them in without enlarging the holes. Fortunately they supplied plenty of spares.
Good luck,
Richard
Brass stirrup steps for the P2K Type 21 tank car are available from Yarmouth Model Works. They also have a number of other brass items that can be used to repair or improve HO freight cars.
The plastic grabirons were a poor choice right from the beginning. I bought several of those cars from the “used” table at a nearby hobbyshop. Most were mangled and/or very poorly assembled. I dumped all of the plastic grabirons, installed or not, along with the plastic sill steps, too, replacing them with parts which I fabricated from wire and flat-brass bar stock.
Some of them were so poorly done that I had to strip-off the lettering, much of which was covered in fingerprints preserved in ca.
At the time, I couldn’t afford the new-in-the-box kits, but when Proto (probably after lots of complaints about the parts and “difficulty” of assembly) released the ready-to-run versions, that store couldn’t sell the kits that were still languishing on the shelf.
Much to my surprise, the next time I visited that store, the kits were on sale…the first and only time I ever saw a sale there, until the final one before the shop closed several years later…that one was a sale only to the uninformed, as the new owner had literally doubled the ticket prices, then offered them at 50% off.
I did buy several of the original on-sale kits (with a true 50%-off), and all of the plastic grabirons and sill steps went straight to the garbage.
Properly built, those kits are as durable as Athearn Blue Box kits or even Tyco r-t-r.
I have some tank car kits from Tangent which came with metal grabirons but the tank railing is plastic…while it’s a very fine casting in plastic, with no flash at all, I replaced it with one made from wire, making it a lot easier to pick up without causing damage.
If I bu
I must be the outlier here. I have about thirty in my fleet, both 8 and 10,000 gallon cars. Maybe half from kits and half RTR. I recall changing out a grab iron maybe four or five times, end sill steps two or three.
Just lucky I guess.
Still, for their time, they were extremely well detailed cars.
Regards, Ed