On some of the freight cars I’m building the car rides too low on the truck. That is, the car mounted coupler is too low (measured by my Kadee coupler guage), and the axels rub on the screws holding the coupler cover on. The obvious solution is to add some shim material between the truck and the car to raise the car body slightly. My problem, what material, and how to prepare it easily. Can someone offer suggestions for appropriate shims and how to cut them to size?
Kadee makes at least two thicknesses of washers that I’m familiar with, the thicker in red and the thinner in gray. They’re an absolute necessity with some of the makes of freight cars (especially some of the older Athearn BB kits). They work beautifully.
the advice on shim washer is a good idea and i do that quite often myself. if you have any kadee draft gear boxes left over and most of us do. you can fabricate your own shims to fit over the king pin and between the body and truck bolsters. you can leave them square since the are never seen anyway and this tends to stabilize the car. just don’t tighten the screws too much.
before you go that route, there is something you might want to consider. many cars ( older athearn especially) have the coupler boxes made into the underframe casting and some of them tend to droop a bit at the ends.
if such is the case, consider drilling through the draft gear box, up into the car floor and tap the hole for a 2-56 screw. this will often pull the coupler up enough to solve the problem.
you can also file the coupler shank down to make it thinner and use a shim in the bottom of the draft gear box to raise it up a bit.
a lot of walthers box cars and reefers have the end axles rubbing on the coupler mounting screw head and the underframe. they go down the track with a squawking noise. if the coupler height is good then you need to file the screw head down a bit and shave the plastic ribs on the underside of the car floor. you can also file the center of the axle down to make it thinner. washers will help with this but they make the car ride a little too high for my tastes.
Since this thread is about adding shims to truck bolsters, the question about the “poultry car” really doesn’t belong here. In web parlance, it’s called “hijacking” a thread and is sometimes considered poor netiquette.
So, Santa now knows that you’ve been naughty, and will likely leave coal in your stocking. Hopefully, you model the steam era.
The car, by the way, was made by Broadway Limited and not Walthers. And yes, they did make them in chicken flavor:
Mr. B, you seem to have missed the joke. The squawking car post was in response to the previous post by grizlump where he mentions tight tolerances causing squawking during motion.