Hi from Belgium,
My fleet of cars is most Micro Trains and Atlas with a few Intermountain ones.
They all cover the steam area but especially between 1935/1945, the period I am modeling.
Prototype photos of the period swow the cars look lower on the tracks
One of the thing which look not great with Nscale cars is the height of the car above the track…
I have put 33’’ wheels on all of them and they look better and put the coupler directly on the car body for better operations.
Some of them need to be lowered a little bit more.
I never tried this, but I know it’s possible.
Did you have some idea or data about this process and especially for the manufacturers I use.
Hope to read you soon.
Marc
My layout at www.Nscale.org Click Personnal Album, Click letter"M", Choice “Marc Magnus Album”
Marc,
I’ve had limited experience with something similar - replacing Bachmann trucks with Micro-Trains. The method I use is to use a hobby knife to cut the truck mounting post. This will bring it down to the bolster height - you may need to use a file at this point. But at this original height, I have had problems with the wheel flanges scraping on some of the underbody details - some cars produce a horrible squeaking screech. Advice would be to use M-T low-profile wheels.
Cheers,
tbdanny
The surest way to go is to file down the bolsters to remove enough material to lower the car on the factory trucks. One problem is that in 2009, Micro Trains insists on continuing to use wheels with giant flanges, which are not in compliance with NMRA recommended practice, so they have to design their cars to ride high enough to clear the flange.
Start by replacing the wheels with lo profile flanges, which allows you to drop the car a little more.
On gondolas, I take an even more radical approach. I cut the entire floor out of the car and lower the shell over the frame.
I then take v-groove Evergreen siding to build a new floor.
The floor ends up being a bit more shallow than the prototype, but this can be disguised by adding a load to the car. The improvement to the exterior of the car is substantial. I don’t have any prototype dimensions at hand, so I use reference photos and just eyeball the adjustments.
I notch out the ends of the shell to allow the truck mounted coupler to swing freely, although you could body mount couplers using this method.
Lee