I own at least 12 of these old Tyco two bay operating hopper cars, and am in the process of finding new trucks and couplers for them. What is the best way to keep the gravel (or whatever I will be hauling in them) from spilling out the bottom when I don’t want it to? The doors on the bottom don’t fit all that well and I suppose if I ran them too fast my load will come out the bottom on rough joints or curves.
Also, how can I make an unloader for these cars?
If you want the gates or hatches to work, you’ll need to come up with some sort of latch affair. I have a few of these, I’ll have to dig one out and see what could be done.
As far as trucks and couplers, that should be easy enough. Replace the excisting by filling in the hole in the bolster and retapping it for the new truck, and body mount the new coupler box.
You should get your self a coupler height gauge, if you don’t already have one.
If you have the Kadee gauge, use the back side (opposite the end with the coupler) to locate the height of the new coupler box, and shim as needed. The newer version, #207 I beleive, is set up for this, but the older #206 works just as well.
Mike.
After your first derailment with a loaded coal car, you may decide it’s not such a good idea. Our club started using live coal loads, but that only lasted until the first time we upset a coal car and had to clean up the mess.
Good Luck,
Joe
You could look at lionels post war unloading ramp and bottom dump n&w hopper to see how they did it. that could be a starting point for a modern version. Or look ar other dump systems. All good starting points to give possible ideas on were to start
maybe put small magnets on the door to keep them closed. And stronger electromagnets at the dump site to pull the open on command
I’ve got about a dozen of those old cars. Here is one on the unloading track:
My first job was to replace all the old Talgo couplers. I cut the mounts off the trucks with a Dremel and used Kadee #5 couplers and Kadee draft gear boxes. I drilled and tapped 2-56 holes in the frames and screwed the boxes in.
Much later, I decided to replace the old plastic wheels with metal ones from Intermountain. The old metal trucks were impossible to take apart without destroying them, so I bought trucks from Tichy, painted and weathered them, and installed them. I think I was able to use the original bolsters and screws, but I had to drill out the bolster hole in the truck to get it to fit. The change in rolling resistance with the new trucks and wheels was amazing.
I’ve also got an old Vollmer loader:
The two chutes are solenoid-operated. I’ve restored them to functionality. It’s a nice model, but it does not work very well. For one thing, you have to remove the roof and manually add more coal, and for another it only holds about 2 cars worth. Then, the bins inside the loader don’t have enough slope, so I had to mount the whole thing at about a 15-degree angle to get the coal to dump at all.
Here is my unloader from the top, without the car:
I built a “volcanic cone” directly below the unloader, with an opening to a box below the layout to collect the coal. The coal heap on the surface is scenic, “ballasted” in place, and all the loose coal ends up below.
There are a number of eBay videos
I don’t recall what issue has the article from the Cripple Creek Central project layout, but the book HO Railroad from Start to Finish had a chapter about an unloader and tweaking the cars for more reliable operation
You could get around this by having a lift-up style actuator. Homemade, of course.
I think the coolest operating hopper car is the Ulrich triple, though that one is a stub track type, for sure.
The Tyco cars seem to win the award for reliably working well, though. I doubt I’ll ever do it, but setting up a loader/unloader like Mr. Beasley did is a fun fantasy.
These cars (plus the Revell one) all came out in the sixties. Curious that in the next half century, no one did another.
Ed
The people who bought the original ones are still cleaning up all the spilled coal! [;)]
Maybe that’s why I’m such a fanatic about finding root causes for derailments and fixing them. I’m very proud about almost never having derailments on my layout. I’ve cleaned up enough spilled coal already, thank you.
A handkerchief over the end of the vacuum cleaner hose works well, but it also picks up other debris and the coal may not be very useable if this happens a lot.
We’ve all enjoyed this kind of model, but it’s more in the line of “toy trains” than “model railroads.”
I bought a hand vac for coal clean up, for my Lionel layout with OPERATING coal loaders, unloaders, and spillers. It works very nicely.
I’ve got a similar thing coming up, where on my HO Free-mo module, I’ll have to sprinkle ballast out for every formal setup, and then clean it up before load-out.
I’m rather hoping the same vacuum will work (like there’s a choice).
Ed
Hello all,
I currently own more than 30 of these vintage hoppers. Both covered and uncovered versions.
My entire pike is based on the loading and unloading of these cars.
In fact I just purchased two more vintage covered Holly Sugar operating hoppers to be repurposed to haul rock dust to line the coal mine.
I have converted these cars to Kadee couplers and #560 HGC trucks.
These cars carry coal loads simulated by non-magnetic black sand used in ashtrays. I use the white version to simulate the rock dust.
The only problem I have from spillage from the operating hopper doors is when they pass over the uncoupling magnets between the rails.
To solve this problem I made sure that the doors were more than 1/32-inch above the magnets. This was achieved by shimming the trucks with either Red or Gray washers.
On some cars the draft gear box heights needed to be adjusted with gear box shims to keep the couplers at the correct height.
As far as unloading you will need to find and use the O.E.M. unloading track section.
These track sections were included in the unloading hopper kit.
Unfortunately the flanges that open the hopper doors are too tall for a locomotive to pass over. The flanges will clear the axles on the trucks of other cars in the consist but not the locomotives.
That means to unload these hoppers you need to push the cars over the unloading track.
On my pike the unloading siding is elevated. There are two GP30s pushing this train up the 3% grade with another GP30 on the head-end.
Once the train rea
Hello all,
Check out this eBay listing for a separate unloading track:
Hope this helps.
This would seem to be a great little project for someone who does resin casting or perhaps 3-D printing. I’m not sure what the demand is for these, but I can imagine some modelers bringing these fine old cars out of retirement if they only had an unloading track.
When I reconfigure my layout, if there is still space for these accessories, I’m going to figure out how to mount the flood loader against a cliff or other scenic element so I can put a larger coal bin above the loader, making loading something I can do without constantly refilling the bins.
I thought the OP may have been talking about the coal hoppers with operating gates, as I have quite a few of these, but after a search, the only 2 bay I found is what you guys are showing, that go with the unloading track.
OK, my question is answered. [(-D]
Except, did these actually excist? I’m not a prototype rivet counter, but the closest thing I have found is a ballast hopper, and didn’t have bottom doors like this.
Maybe it’s just a fun way that Tyco came up with for a self unloading hopper. [(-D]
Mike.
Last week at the Atlanta Train Show I scored one of these hopper sets mint in box with the unloading track for $3.00!
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It looks like a nifty little set up and a nicely detailed car for a train set accessory. I can see why so many people call this one Tyco’s best.
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-Kevin
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Great find! I’ve only found one, and it cost me about $12 just for the car, used. I bought the others new, but that was 50 years ago.
Other than the horn hooks and Talgo trucks, they are nice models. Yes, they only made them with one road number per paint scheme, but that’s nitpicking.
I’m sure no one ever made a prototype with those clamshell doors, but it’s a compromise I can live with to get a simple and foolproof mechanism. Most of mine came with silver metal doors, zinc-something, I’d imagine from the color. While swapping out the trucks and body-mounting the couplers, I sprayed all the hopper doors flat black to make them less obvious.
I suppose these show up once in a while, but anyone who is interested should probably jump on this. FYI, it’s mounted on a 9-inch straight section of Atlas code 100 brass track. As I recall, I re-mounted mine on nickel-silver track, and painted the plastic actuator flat black.
Hello all,
Exactly!
Tyco made lots of working unloading cars.
Some were log loaders/unloaders, others loaded boxes on to freight cars while other had hand crank conveyors that would load plastic beads into gondolas. There was even one that unloaded piggy back trailers.
These were very toy-like but the operating two bay hoppers were the most realistic.
Hope this helps.
JJ, it would be interesting to see some pictures of your layout, and your hopper operations.
Mike.
Hello all,
Thank you, that is a great compliment!
I’d love to post some pics or even videos but I refuse to go through a 3rd party hosting site.
If anyone can provide a workaround to post directly to this site I would be greatly appreciative, otherwise you will have to suffice with my written descriptions.
Again, thank you for the great compliment.
Hope this helps.
Ha! I did that with my old DC layout once. Good to have a vacuum handy, unfortunately a vacuum although it is fast, does not discriminate between the load that was spilled and the surrounding scenary that you thought was glued down OK but then you find…some of it wasn’t.