Here is another installment on my model railroad misadventures, and how I overcame the problems encountered along the way. By now most everyone who reads these are aware that I am in the process of building stashed rolling stock kits and rebuilding older rolling stock in my possession. This story is about a tank car that was full of headaches.
This project was rebuilding an Athearn 40 foot single dome tank car. I had built this car many years ago while I was in Jr. High school. At that time I had some problems getting it together as well as not having the assembly skills I possess now. Then add being knocked around in a box and going through three moves, the car definitely needed rebuilding
I began the project by disassembling the car. I immediately noticed this was going to be an involved project because removing all the screwed on bits simply involved grabbing the part and pulling and watching the screw fall out. Item number one to fix was then quickly established as needing to fill all the screw holes and re-drilling so the self threading Stock Athearn screws had something solid to bite into. Now most people when they fill and re-drill holes they probably go buy styrene rod of certain diameters and out the existing hole to the next largest diameter they have fill it and then drill out. Since I am a pack rat in the long standing tradition of model railroad pack ratting, I have a healthy supply of old model kit parts trees, I use them to do the majority of fill and drill work I require. I usually have to file it down to fit the specific diameter I need, but then this also gives me the flexibility to shape to any unique and troublesome situations that come up. After I had have my pieces of old parts tree filed to fit. I glued them in place with Testor’s Plastic Cement. Once the cement was dry, I drilled out the holes. One thing I do is if there isn’t a part that will overlay the hole that needs drilled. I try to not fill the whole completely so that way drilling
You might want to add some additional weight to the car also. MY experience is that tanks cars are nearly as light as flats and prone to derailment. My way of weighting them is to fill the top half with soupy plaster before assembling. Any on the outside can just be wiped off.
While I do not have a scale, This particular athearn kit, came with two steel weights to put inside the tank. I do not know of this is normal Ateharn tank Car kit practice as this is my only athearn tank, but it gives the car the apparent amount of heft. After rebuilding I am not having derailment problems with this car, however the sloppy coupler box lid fit is creating hell with uncouplings.
When I was building a few MDC ‘generic’ modern tank cars, I was lucky enough to have access to some old iron pipe. Hacked off a length (Sawz-All!), filled the bottom 1/3 of the tank with epoxy, and plopped it down. Nicely weight the tank cars, and seem quite stable.
Put some paint on the ends of the couple pins, then put the cover on. This should leave a dot of paint. From there you can estimate the center of the dot and drill.
Thanks for the tip, Its such a simple solution I should have thought it up, BUt then again, I post these problems so that I may may learn from my fellow modelers.
Here is a problem that I have been experiencing and perhaps you can help; I have a ready-to-run HO Athearn 40’ Derrick Car that has been derailing like crazy. It is particularly poor through turnouts, however, it derails on other parts of the track as well.
I have checked the track and the wheels with a NMRA gauge and it checks out just fine (and this is the only car that is experiencing this amout of derailement through turnouts and what have you) and I was wondering if it may be because the car was too light. Essentially this car is a flat car with a crane on it (not very heavy). It is the only Athearn car that I have on my rr that experiences this type of problem.
had that problem with athearn, use 3/8 hex nuts, cheap fit well & effective, drill and tap coupler cover for 00/80 screws, change out wheel sets, or trucks then test again, use longer center screw for dome than sent with kit also end 2 could be a little longer.
I upgraded and repainted a cheap Bachmann version. I added a sheet of lead on the bottom (under the floor) to bring up the weight. I have not (to date) changed out the wheels, despite the deep flanges, since the various metal wheelsets I have on hand won’t fit the 3 axle trucks without modification (and I don’t yet have the truck reaming tool, which should fix the problem). At some point, I may simply swap out the trucks entirely. But I digress. I would weigh the car, and bring it up to the NMRA recommended wieght first, check the trucks for free motion, then go from there.