I recently got back into the hobby and dropped a size, going from the HO I had years ago to N. Things seem to have come a long way, but some things haven’t changed, like the fact that every company has a different way of doing the same thing.
How the heck do I get the trucks off an Intermountain N 66536 2 bay covered hopper? They’re GREAT looking cars, and honestly, I don’t think the trucks are bad, but I want to change the coupler to get rid of the slinky effect they’re causing. I’m guessing I have to get the car apart and unscrew the truck from the inside, but so far I haven’t figured out how that will happen.
Honestly, I’m tempted to remove all my truck mounted couplers, since even in N scale my layout space is dictating a primarily switching layout. The better performance when backing might be important. That will wait till I’ve got things much further along though, right now I’m just trying to replace the old style MT coupler with the newer one or something else entirely.
The couplers are still the same,you still get the slinky effect.I have a friend that replaces that damn spring with a very small piece of foam rubber.The foam rubber does not osolate so there is no slinky affect and the couplers still function normally.I have not done my cars because I have trouble working with such small items
I do not have that many IM cars but the ones I have use the standard truck pin.If this is what your cars have the secret to removing the trucks is using a thin bladed screw driver or a #17 chisel blade and work it in between the truck and car body then lightly twisting it back and forth to work the truck pin loose.Go lightly though as those pins have invisable wings and they will with to much forse fly off to oblivion.
I thought there was a new one that was reversed, it could push IN under tension but defaulted to full extension. Either way, I’m thinking I need something else for all the backing, so I’ll have to decide what’s going on there and which height is needed. I will look at my other cars and see which ones I like. That isn’t a big selection yet though, five cars and a loco so far.
Dang, I was so hopeful. It sounds like I may be in luck that I don’t plan on having many cars. I may even just leave these alone and use them as mobile scenery, since the current layout plan doesn’t involve any use for them. I’m looking at maybe 3 or four industries, one of which is a propane or oil terminal and another is container based. I don’t have a fixed plan yet that requires covered hoppers, they just fit the region/railroad/era and were on sale. [A]
I’m not super picky about the prototypical accuracy as long as things look and work nicely, so my solution seems obvious. No more MT coupler cars if I can avoid it. Since I only need maybe a dozen total I think I can make that work for a road as popular and diverse as Union Pacific sometime in the past twenty years.
Thanks. I may follow your suggestion and try to get these apart if I get motivated, but for now I’m back to focusing on fine tuning my industry choices and track layout before starting on the foundation and actual layout. I’m still amazed at how much this hobby has improved in the past twenty years. Things that were strictly for the electrical engineering geeks of the world are now common place. Detail and quality levels are excellent, though prices seem to have gone up more than inflation accounts for. I just got my NCE Powercab and a decoder for the one motorized turnout I have right now for testing and it was just awesome how easy that was to setup and make work.