I’m looking for replacement passenger trucks that will fit a Branchline single-window Pullman coach? I checked the Walthers catalog and was surprised to find that there were few replacement trucks listed.
Also, I was told that the NYC Pullman Heavyweight coaches generally ran on 4-axle trucks rather than 6-axle trucks. If this is true, would they use the same 6-axles trucks but merely remove the center axle to make them 4-axle? Or, would they use a specific 4-axle truck that could handle the load?
I have a 15 car set of the Hallmark MKT passenger cars, AKA sleds, so I wanted to replace the trucks with free roling newer versions. I had enough Central Valley trucks to do the job but they require that they be oiled if they sit for long periods of time so I went with the Walthers heavyweight “6” axle passenger trucks as they are fairly inexpensive as well as fairly free rolling.
As fior the 4 and 6 axle thing I had much the same thing with the MKT cars as some pictures I ran across showed a 4 axle truck on the “coaches” and some showed a 6 axle truck. But these are 85’ coaches and they all showed 6 axle trucks so I would say the main factor here is the length of the car.
Personally on the Bachmann coaches I would use the 4 axle truck and use Walthers trucks, they have them o some sort of sale in most of the flyers they send out so they aren’t hard to come by.
But…this is mostly a guess on my part and without doing research on the NYC I can’t say for sure but I would suggest the Walthers trucks.
I replaced my branchline heavyweight 6 axle trucks with the walthers ones. As much as I like the blueprint heavyweight series, their trucks are not the best at tracked. I think they are a little too flimsy.
I also added .5 oz weights over the trucks, and trimmed the lower frame beam sil to help the truck clear the sil truck around r28 curves.