refurbishing old Bachmann freight cars for my inaugural train project. Don’t ask why, just believe.
Bachmann freight cars have these massive 3/16" bosses on the truck bolsters. The more usual mounting face is flush mating against the flat tops of most truck brands. The mounting screw acts as the boss for most trucks.
Before I slice off these bosses to fit other trucks is there a better way?
Bachmann makes replacement trucks available through Walthers but I have some leftover accurail kit trucks I thought of using instead. They don’t sit over a boss, just screw into place.
I’ve already tapped the underframe out to 2-56 which is slightly oversize for Bachmann truck screws, the big flat headed ones. I plan to use 2-56 nylon machine screws instead.
Body mount couplers went on nicely. I sliced off the underframe mouldings between the end of car and truck bolsters and fit the Kadee #148 in snap together coupler boxes, mounted securely with nylon 2-56 screws into newly drilled and tapped holes. I may add a bit of glue to the coupler box where it mounts to the underframe
Just better trucks now and I’m all set. Ideas?
If I understand you correctly. You have Accurail trucks you can use? If so, they are good. Just add Intermountain wheels and they are about the best you can get. As for “boses”. Yes, cut them off. Be careful how much you do cut so that the height is correct for couplers, etc. Bachmann has a very “up and down” reputation for quality. Some items are great, and some are junk. Just MHO. Hope this helps.
Good ideas. I have used the Truck Tuner before putting in new wheels.
The past few years I have seen questions like this at the Bachmann forums.
Rich
Exactly the information I was looking for.
Thanks once again.
I’d been searching generally on the internet and all I could find were Kadee trucks that seemed to be drop in replacements for Bachmann trucks but including the Talgo style truck mounted coupler.
I’m too far into the one boxcar to adopt that solution. Thanks for the caution about how much bolster to slice off. I checked the now body mounted coupler heights and I have the two sizes of Kadee precision gauge fibre washers available so I think I’ll get the coupler heights just right.
I will look at those Kadees for the other four cars before I start slicing bits off. One gondola has a quite nice metal underframe which might not modify so easily, for example.
These cars are not trainset but they sure aren’t very detailed. They all have weights and a decent look to them. Good decals and paint so worthwhile sprucing up a bit.
I am finding this return to the hobby really emotionally satisfying in ways I could not have predicted. My first electric train was “taken from me” when I left England as a young boy to emigrate to Canada. I used the money to buy a Scalextric road racing set (US version, disappointingly inferior to the British version I wanted but could not get). Only later did I use my paper route earnings to buy a CN freight train toy train made by Triang with hook and loop English style couplers. I messed around with that in my teenage years and soon realized it was just not real enough for my interest level. Apparently, there were collectors of that strange stuff, sold the whole thing years ago to the same LHS I now shop at. Bought my undecorated (and now fully decorated) BB F7 with the money. And so on.
So, I’m fixing up my son in law’s model railroad equipment that survived his loss of his layout at about the same age. Sure it makes no sense economically or even from a model railroading perspective. But it sure feels like