I have a small collection of IHC passenger cars, among the upgrades I wish to give them are, body mounted Kadee couplers, metal wheels, proper weighting, and I was considering swapping them from 2 axle trucks to 3 axle trucks. The cars have offset bolsters that I’ll have to either find trucks that match or correct the position.
The kit I plan to use for the couplers is Kadees #451 “extended swing” gear boxes.
Steven,
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As with most of your plans, my question is… WHY?
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I am not a passenger car guy, I strongly prefer freight trains.
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However, I do have four passenger trains, and one of these is a nine car set of IHC smooth side lightweights pulled by a nice A/B set of Stewart/Kato F7s. I assume these cars are similar to yours.
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I run 24 inch curves in my hidden trackage.
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My IHC passenger cars perform just fine with the factory wheels and the factory installed talgo style horn-hook (X2F) couplers. The Stewart/Kato F7s came with these couplers also, so the rear of the “B” unit is not converted to Kadees.
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What problem are you having? These cars do not lend themselves easily to any of the modifications you are suggesting. I think you are opening a can of worms here.
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In the words of Beast Boy: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fiddle with it.”
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You might have a lot more fun building interiors for these cars.
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-Kevin
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The talgo trucks and the couplers haven’t worked well for me, they derail and uncouple like crazy.
Also I want to bring them to club standards so I can run them there.
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When do they derail? Are you trying to back them up?
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The uncoupling is a bit strange. You can say a lot of bad things about the Horn-Hook (X2F) coupler design, but they do stay coupled. IHC’s version of the NMRA coupler is one of the better ones.
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I would like more detail on the problems.
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Six wheel trucks will make derailments more of a problem.
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-Kevin
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They decouple at any change in elevation, and derail at switches, while running forward.
They’ve been in storage a while and I’m really wanting to get them running again.
These trucks have the offset bolster pin maybe them in black would work?
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Did someone clip the uncoupling pins off of the couplers? That should keep them from face seperating on elevation transitions.
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The Walthers six wheel passenger car trucks are completely rigid. Your trackwork better be PERFECT before you even consider these. Otherwise, you will be lifting flanges all over the place.
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Did the cars get hot in storage? Maybe the floors have deformed slightly.
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-Kevin
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There’s the trucks and the couplers.
Those look like mine.
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My train has only ever run through Kato or Shinohara trackage. Never a problem going forward. I do not attempt to back up passenger trains.
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Have you checked the wheel gauge? Have you added any car weights? Is anything interfering with the truck swing or motion? Have you checked the trackage?
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I have added about 3 ounces of weight to each of mine using 1/32" lead sheet.
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Passenger cars are much less forgiving than freight cars.
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-Kevin
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McHenry makes a snap-in replacement coupler:
http://www.athearn.com/Search/Default.aspx?CatId=THCC
I’m not a big fan of plastic couplers but in the case of the Rivarossi cars these are a good replacement. They have another model for the six wheel truck and yet another for baggage/RPO cars.
Repeated uncoupling is more of a track/roadbed problem. I used to run long trains of Rivarossi cars with no uncoupling issues.
Just looking at the photo I might guess your gauge to be a little wide?
Back when I ran lots of Rivarossi cars I would use the Kadee #520 33" wheel as a replacement. The 36" wheel would rub the brake shoe and trying to bend it away would usually result in breaking it off.
http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/t/204295.aspx
Good Luck, Ed
As a rule the one thing you can say for IHC passenger cars is that if they came with two axle streamline trucks, those are correct trucks at least in terms of axle count. Certain dome liners and reworked heavy weight steamline cars had 3 axle trucks but they were in the minority. Is there a prototypical reason you want to convert to 3 axle trucks?
IHC at one time offered after market metal wheels for their trucks which were undersized as are the originals, but pretty nice. You still see them at swap meets.
So I’d keep the trucks; upgrade the wheels instead. Maybe upgrade to the correct 36" wheels but be mindful what that does to coupler height as well as overall car height. Some shaving of the bolster may be in order. On AHM Rivarossi cars swapping out to 36" wheels also meant the cast on brake shoes had to be filed down or they’d rub on the wheel treads.
There are after market knuckle couplers that are Kadee compatible that adapt to the bolsters. Body mounted couplers on full length passenger cars need broad radius curves (and be coupled to other cars and/or a locomotive that have some generous swing to their coupler mount as well.
Yeah I know some guys are sticklers for body mounted couplers and when it comes to freight cars I am among them. But frankly, the extended swing needed for body mounted couplers on 80’ or 85’ passenger cars often comes at the cost of accurate and prototypical details for steam hoses and other passenger car details. Ironically those details CAN be mounted on the bolster mount and in that sense there are certain situations where truck mounted couplers on long passenger cars can permit MORE prototypical detailing than can body mounted.
Thanks for the input guys, I was wanting to change to 3 axle trucks as if the cars received them to increase the smoothness of the ride and reduce axle loading.
This is the coupler I was thinking of using.
Edit, I checked Walthers and the trucks I was considering cost 15 bucks a pair and are DWSO (discontinued when sold out) so I cross checked the three axle trucks off a IHC HW RPO (courtesy Ed, thanks again!) The bolster hole sits between halfway between two axles and the middle axle, so like this A l ABl A
A, is an axle
I, is the exact middle between two axles
B, is where the bolster hole sits.
So to get the hole in the right spot I’ll take some styrene make a plate that sits atop the truck I then drill a new bolster hole in the right spot. I’ll save a lot of money only having to scrounge for trucks from older cars.
As far as the Talgo trucks I’ve heard a lot of atrocious things about them, I just don’t feel comfortable lugging a 24 car train (that’s my ultimate goal, to have a 24 car set of matching cars to run behind the T-1) up the helixes 3% grade and 32" radius with Talgo couplers.
Steven,
again, the title of your thread does not tell what it is about. This is not your highschool paper, so please be more descriptive next time.
Why change a prototypical train into something, which never existed and waste time and money on it? I am afraid this is a stillborn project, like many previous ones.
Have to agree with Tinplate Toddler, but I also want to add…
Six wheel trucks were used on the old heavyweight passenger cars because they were pretty heavy (duh). When the “streamlined” or lightweight cars came out, they were significantly lighter and used 4 wheel trucks. The IHC car you show is of that type. So putting 6 wheel trucks on them - even if you could get them to fit - just would not make sense in the prototype world (or the modeling world).
I also agree with Mobileman and Ulrich,
The title of the thread doesn’t tell the reader what the topic is about. I find it annoying that I get “hooked” into reading something and finding out it is not what it implied by the title. It also wastes my time.
As Ulrich recommended, please be more descriptive; IIRC, you can go back and edit your title after the fact as well.
Please be more considerate of your fellow forum members.
I have found that on the club layout six axle passenger cars are more reliable than the four axle ones, besides I think it looks cool, while the rivet counters are getting fired up the T-1 probably will need help pulling all those cars around so by the end of the summer I hope to buy a BLI E8b and get it painted in Brunswick Green and have striping to match the T-1, that’s right a B unit running behind a steam locomotive, WITHOUT an A unit!
I’ll keep you guys posted on the upgrades!
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Good Heavens! This is a disaster waiting to happen.
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The only times I have seen 24 car passenger trains running are on N-Trak modular layouts.
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An HO scale 24 car passenger train with locomotives might weigh as much as 12 pounds, maybe even more! The coupler stress on the front car going up a grade in a helix would be completely unreasonable.
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That Kadee coupler you want to use will have more seperation issues than the stock coupler you are already using. That little screw on the centering hub will be experiencing way too much stress.
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A “B” unit behind a T-1 is your own taste, but that would never happen in my world of nonsense, and my world of nonsense includes an organic switch engine! Doing it on a Pennsylvania train… well… to each his own.
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Enjoy yourself. You are in for a challenge.
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I did not see any project updates from you in Weekend Photo Fun. Has the Proto 2000 freight car effort stalled?
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Keep us posted.
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-Kevin
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Not stalled but waiting in the siding, why? Well graduation is this coming weekend, so I’m busy.
Duplicate post.
I’ve used the McHenry couplers to upgrade a set of IHC PRR MOW passenger cars. They seem to work pretty well, and I don’t plan on running long MOW trains. If only they came in metal…
I hate to nit-pick, but the PRR didn’t use a hyphen in “T1”. For a second I was thinking you were talking about the Reading RR locomotive and went “what stripes?”
As for pulling a 20+ passenger car freight train up a grade, much less a helix, I can’t help but feel that’s asking for trouble. Not only do you have to worry about the tension on the couplers, but also the radial component of the force as the train climbs the helix. I’m not saying that it isn’t possible, but it will definitely take a lot of work and troubleshooting to make sure it’s bulletproof. The last thing you’d need is a 19 car runaway on the helix.
If you do pull it off, please post a video! I’d love to see it running, B-unit and all. 
Luckily the helix is only only thee decks, so it shouldn’t cause too many problems.
I will certainly post a video when I get them running!
The club is almost completely flat except for a few changes in elevation here and there.