In a few instances, I have had to purchase either IHC passenger cars or Con Cor passenger cars because that was the only source for a road name that I needed.
Out of the box, these cars are awful. The color scheme is fine, and the detail (or lack thereof) is acceptable, but the positives stop there.
The cars are simply too lightweight, averaging about 3.5 ounces, with the Con Cor cars being a little heavier than the IHC cars since a pair of weighted plates are glued to the floor of each car.
The couplers are truck mounted which makes it impossible to back the cars up without derailments. And, even in forward, the couplers are not very good and are difficult to uncouple.
The trucks are plastic and both the IHC cars and the Con Cor cars use plastic push pins to mount the trucks to the underside of the car frame. The Con Cor push pin simply lodges into the frame under its own pressure. The IHC car uses a split pin that extends up into the interior of the car. The push pins are centered on the IHC cars, but the push pins are forward offset on the Con Cor cars. These push pin arrangements cause the cars to lean severely into the turns on curved track.
Lastly, the wheels are plastic on the Con Cor cars and the older IHC cars. In my experience, plastic wheels are poor performers and leave sticky black grime on the rails which metal wheeled locos pick up immediately.
So, I set about to upgrade these passenger cars for better performance.
The first thing that I did was to replace the truck mounted couplers with Kadee body mounted whisker couplers. Kadee does sell coupler conversion kits for those who wish to retain the truck mounted arrangement, and i initially tried that on the Con Cor cars, but I quickly switched to body mounted couplers. In both cases, I needed to add coupler mounting pads to the underside of the car body. Jay Bee Enterprises makes coupler mounting pads for the IHC
That is an excellent write-up & how to!
I am saving it in my train/data directory for future reference!
Thank you!!!
I am really glad that you were able to make them work & improve them for your environment.
It sounds like you are very satisfied with the results, & they are now real working cars on your layout.
Great work!!
It’s a shame one has to go thru so much work just to get a car to operate as it should. Even the high priced Walthers and Rapido cars need fine tuning / adjustments before they are good to go.
Kind of ironic that the ol cheapie Athearn BB passenger cars were typically easy to put together and ran really well thereafter.
But, we all want more detail and realism and that calls for more work on our parts - no matter what we pay for the cars.
No complaints here, just stating my view of the situation…
I do have some Walthers and Rapido cars. Of course, they are properly weighted, and they come with body mounted couplers and metal wheels.
The main issue with the Walthers and Rapido cars is the realistic diaphragm at the end of each car and the close coupling to join the diaphragms. This can cause the cars to derail on tight curves. My layout has 32" radius curves which I find are too tight for the factory installed couplers, so I alternate Kadee whisker couplers, medium and long, on each car. My guess is that you need at least 40" radius curves to be able to stick with the factory installed medium couplers.
One other issue that I found with the Rapido cars, but not the Walthers cars, is that the trucks are too tight, such that the wheels don’t spin freely. I had to use the Micro Mark truck tuner to free up the wheels, and it was a real challenge to fit the tuner into the truck due to its tightness.
Nice write up Rich. If you can still find them, adding the hideously colored plastic interiors that the old IHC marketed adds quite a bit of weight. The other redeeming factor for the IHC passenger cars is cost, at least when I purchased them, they were being sold off in sets a significant discounts. I still see piles of them at the train-shows but have not paid attention to the price.
Well written and a keeper for all who want to upgrade these cars to be reliable runners. I started the upgrade on these cars over ten years ago. As we communicated in your prior posts they can be good runners BUT they require some work. I like your solution for omitting the middle axle on the three axle heavyweight truck. I scrounged around for quite awhile trying to find a suitable #6 screw that would fit without interfering with the axle. In the end I got out the old file and spent quite a bit of time filing the screw heads down.
On my specific cars I found the36" wheel sets worked well in the heavyweight trucks but the brake shoes interfered with the 36" wheels on the four axles trucks. For these trucks I used 33’ wheels. I also used the McHenry couplers on my IHC fleet after finding the Kadee truck mounting kits to be a lot of work due to a tighter radius on my old layout. Body mounting if possible is the way to go as the McHenry’s remain troublesome and I need to check the coupler heights every time I take the cars out of the box. For those still using McHenry’s with their IHC cars a good improvement is to use a Kadee coupler spring in place of the McHenry spring. Lastly for weight I have used flat steel purchased at either the blue or orange big box stores. There are some notches in the bottom of the car, measure the width and cut to the length between the trucks. Paint it black and use double sided foam tape to attach it. On the down side this method takes up some room at the bottom of the car and the IHC interiors will not fit properly. In later cars I used black silicone sealant to affix the steel weight. This gave me a little more interior room.
Thanks for posting your easy to follow tutorial on improving these cars.
Rich … That’s an outstanding write-up about upgrading ConCor and IHC cars. Rivarossi cars also need to be upgraded in this fashion.
I have upgraded cars for all three of these. Here is how I do it. Much is the same as you do.
Painting … I repaint the stainless steel cars in an effort. to match the plated cars made by BLI for the California Zephry. I have yet to try Alclad, but the results I see in this forum tell me I should do so.
Couplers. … I use Kadee long shank couplers. I make my own mounting pads and glue them in. I hold the coupler where I want it to find the location of the hole for coupler screw. The coupling distance should be as short as possible without having the ends of the cars (diaphrams) rubbing each other causing derailemnts on curves.
Trucks … Ideally, I replace the trucks with better quality. I can find out-of-production trucks made by IHC (high quality type), Central Valley, or Tenshodo. New bolsters must be fabricated with correct pivot location. I use self tapping screws after drilling holes. … Alternatively, I use existing trucks with couplers removed. If they have plastic wheels, I replace with metal wheelsets. Rivarossi cars need 33" wheels instead of 36" wheels. Also, Rivarossie trucks have brake shoes that may be too close to the wheels, and they can be bent back so they are not working brakes. … After mounting trucks, I make sure the roof height is the correct 13’ 6" above the rail. I adjust if needed. Then I check coupler height and adjust if needed.
Weight … I add enough weight to make the cars weigh 7 ounces. I use either the “stick-on” type or I make my own from steel bars. The steel bars are held inside the car on the floor with a good adhesive.
Interiors. … I sometimes add seats and other interior details. Also, sometimes I install window shades, blinds, or curtains. Usually, I do not bother, however. Instead of interiors, I place black construction paper insid
I’ve had the Walthers Budds & Athearn Bombardier cars go around a 22" curve right out of the box with no issues on my last layout. That was good as the curve was situated in a tunnel. So a 32" curve shouldn’t be a problem. All the cars have been updated using KD #5’s so I no longer have a problem when I’m trying to get the cars to couple to each other
My current layout has a couple of curves that are still less than 30" , still no issues & I’m not the worlds best track layer.
Rich … That’s an outstanding write-up about upgrading ConCor and IHC cars. Rivarossi cars also need to be upgraded in this fashion.
I have upgraded cars for all three of these. Here is how I do it. Much is the same as you do.
Painting … I repaint the stainless steel cars in an effort. to match the plated cars made by BLI for the California Zephry. I have yet to try Alclad, but the results I see in this forum tell me I should do so.
Couplers. … I use Kadee long shank couplers. I make my own mounting pads and glue them in. I hold the coupler where I want it to find the location of the hole for coupler screw. The coupling distance should be as short as possible without having the ends of the cars (diaphrams) rubbing each other causing derailemnts on curves.
Trucks … Ideally, I replace the trucks with better quality. I can find out-of-production trucks made by IHC (high quality type), Central Valley, or Tenshodo. New bolsters must be fabricated with correct pivot location. I use self tapping screws after drilling holes. … Alternatively, I use existing trucks with couplers removed. If they have plastic wheels, I replace with metal wheelsets. Rivarossi cars need 33" wheels instead of 36" wheels. Also, Rivarossie trucks have brake shoes that may be too close to the wheels, and they can be bent back so they are not working brakes. … After mounting trucks, I make sure the roof height is the correct 13’ 6" above the rail. I adjust if needed. Then I check coupler height and adjust if needed.
Weight … I add enough weight to make the cars weigh 7 ounces. I use either the “stick-on” type or I make my own from steel bars. The steel bars are held inside the car on the floor with a good adhesive.
Interiors. … I sometimes add seats and other interior details. Also, sometimes I install window shades, blinds, or curtains. Usually, I do not bother, however. Instead o
After years of struggle, I have finally got my track work to the point where it is pretty good, and that was no small task. My measured curves, using a Ribbon Rail Metal Track Alignment Gauge for verification, are all 32" radius (or slightly broader in a few instances).
While my Athearn 72’ streamlined passenger cars and my Walthers 80’ passenger cars could easily negotiate the curves, my Rapido cars could not. The problem was the diaphragms touching each other, causing derailments. A combination of of long and medium couplers solved the derailment problems, and the diaphragms nearly touch.
I used a similar combination of couplers on the IHC cars, although that was not necessary on the Con Cor cars.
I have re worked all my TTG Rivarossi passenger cars in this manner, although I’d like to replace the trucks on them at some point. Instead of omitting the center axle on the 6 wheel trucks, I drilled out the hole in the bottom of the car that the pin snaps in, and glued in a piece of tube styrene, and then another piece inside it. the smaller piece is the perfect size to tap and use a 2-56 screw.
As far as weighting HO cars of any size, well maybe not ore hoppers, I use nickels (USA $.05 piece) and the adhesive of your choice. The cheapest way I have found and they can be placed quite strategically. Unless very very old and worn, they all weigh 5 grams. The price is right and availability is excellent in the USA Happy Holidays!
I’ve got 4 of these cars. I’m not thrilled with them, but at least they are the right length. They cost me $40 total at a train show. I have the UP variant.
I replaced one car’s X2F coupler with a McHenry type, changed out the plastic wheelsets. They’re alright I guess.
IHC corrugated side streamliners. I had to stay with truck mounted couplers to make it around my 22 inch curves. I painted the red stripe thru the windows with a rattle can and some masking tape. Cars are lit with the Walthers lighting ket, and home made pickup wipers and metal wheels I got from IHC back when they were still in business. Most of them have the IHC molded plastic interior kit, painted an unobtrusive color. All of them have enough sheet lead to bring them up to NMRA weight recommendations. All the plastic snap in truck retaining pins replaced with 6-32 pan head machine screws.
It pleases me to see that this 6 1/2 year old thread is still alive and well and helpful to others trying to upgrade IHC and Con-Cor passenger cars.
All these years later, I still have my IHC cars (Monon) on the layout, but I sold off my Con-Cor cars (NYC) a few years back as I no longer modeled that road name.
Happy Holidays!
IHC corrugated side streamliners. I had to stay with truck mounted couplers to make it around my 22 inch curves. I painted the red stripe thru the windows with a rattle can and some masking tape. Cars are lit with the Walthers lighting ket, and home made pickup wipers and metal wheels I got from IHC back when they were still in business. Most of them have the IHC molded plastic interior kit, painted an unobtrusive color. All of them have enough sheet lead to bring them up to NMRA weight recommendations. All the plastic snap in truck retaining pins replaced with 6-32 pan head machine screws.