How does one go about securing dummy trucks on a frame. Both are HO Athearn products of an F unit. I just had a body shell of an old B unit that I’d like to see run. I thought there would be an easy way to secure the trucks, add couplers to the frame and be off and running. No such luck. There were two square pieces on a sprue that came with the trucks. Any help appreciated. If you could e-mail me at lkaimi@verizon.net I’d be more than grateful for the advice.
The Athearn Dummy F-B unit I have uses the same clip that holds the trucks on a powered unit.
You need to have a frame from either a dummy or a powered unit. The trucks are the same as a powered unit with the exception of not having internal gears.
The trucks mount exactly the same as a powered unit. There is a clip that covers the worm gear that secures the truck to the frame. Since these are dummy trucks there should be no gears in them so the clip just snaps over the area where the worm gear would normily sit.
Bill
If you’re looking at very old Athearns, this might be different. I recently bought a dummy F7-B (Milwaukee) from eBay. It looks like it was originally a Hi-Fi drive (rubber band) frame. These trucks simply fitted over a post in the base, and were held on by the rubber bands themselves. On this dummy B, which is a bit newer than my original Hi-Fi’s, the post was tapped with a screw hole, and the screw secured the trucks. There were no clips. There may also be a washer needed to hold the trucks on, but I don’t remember.
I’ve got two “neutered” Hi-Fi engines. Since there’s no provision for securing the trucks, I just put the trucks on the rails and sit the engines on top of them. As long as they stay on the tracks, everything is fine.