I have a bunch of old Athrean fright cars and I want to establish a standard for them and then upgrade them all. I want to pick a coupler, truck, and car weight. In addition for my old wood side 40’ cars I would like to pick a truck that is a little more period accurate than the standard I set above.
So, can you guys recommend a standard truck to be used on cars from 1950 to 1975 and then another one for before 1950 and if there is one for before 1940 which is cool then that too [:)]
For the 1950-1975 period, most freight cars rode on “Bettendorf” cast steel side frame trucks. Athearn blue box cars came with a decent representation of this truck in molded black plastic. A quick spray of red auto body primer will give the sideframes the proper rust red look. Metal wheels improve the looks, by virtue of the shiny metal wheel tread. Rolling can be improved thru use of a special reamer tool “trucktuner” available from Micromark.
Overall car looks can be improved by spray painting the under side a a flat dark gray. Wrap a piece of wide painter’s masking tape around the entire car, place the car bottom side up with trucks removed, and spray the entire bottom. The paint makes the steel weight less obvious to view. Keep paint out of coupler boxes and off of couplers.
For couplers, I, and many others, recommend Kadee # 5’s, or the whisker spring upgrade to the #5. You will find that all blue box Athearns need a washer under the trucks to bring the couplers up to proper height.
For weight, you cannot go wrong with the NMRA recommended practice 20.1 of one ounce plus one half ounce per inch of car length. You can find a pdf of NMRA RP 20.1 at the NMRA website. You will find most blue box cars are an ounce light just out of the box.
The problem with standardizing on one truck is that prototype cars used many subtly different kinds. Do some prototype research on trucks and install appropriate types. You may end up with a variety of ASF/Barber/Bettendorf and others, in both solid- and roller-bearing types, and you won’t have to worry that performance will be sub-optimal. Most HO trucks, including Athearn, work well with Intermountain or ExactRail machined metal wheels, so I can see real merit in standardizing on those brands of wheelsets (which I consider equivalent in quality).
I’d advise using either Kadee 148 or 158 “whisker” couplers to avoid the separate centering springs.
As already stated, just go with NMRA recommended practice for weight.
Rob mentioned Intermountain, Athearn and Accurail, which are good suggestions.
Accurail makes good, solid trucks which have sideframes in accurate widths that look very good, and can be ordered in bulk from their website. They can be bought with metal wheels – Intermountain’s standard replacement wheelsets also fit and can be ordered in bulk as well.