I’m beginning to tune up my inventory of covered hoppers, box cars, tank cars and coil/low side gondola cars. My collection is a variety of manufacturers and I’m replacing or upgrading trucks, couplers and/or wheel sets as needed. I’m also weighing each piece and will be adding weight as needed to which I’ll need to disassemble the cars. I have a couple questions for you all;
Is there a one stop place to go to find disassembly instructions for all the car types and manufacturers?
Do any of you have advice on my tune ups?
Is there anything other than what I listed above that you’d recommend I do?
#1 No #2 Replace couplers with knuckle type. #3 I use Micro-Trains couplers and trucks, but many other manufacturers are compatible, some are not. Adding weight is highly overrated. Unless a car is extremely underweight and constantly derails, I don’t do it. If possible, place your lightest cars at the rear of the train to avoid string lining. If I have to, I use lead, because it’s easy malleable.
Don’t lick your fingers after handling lead.
MT couplers play nice with most other knuckles, Accumates (Atlas) too.
90%+ of my fleet have either of those two.
Kato and Bachmann not so much, they only play well with themselves. I swap them for MT’s.
Good luck. Lots of trial and error here.
Unimates are great but require lifting of cars to couple and uncouple. Great for cars that will always be together.
The bottoms of most cars are easily pried off from the ends or the middles. Use a thin screwdriver or a single edged razor blade.