Upgrading Trucks on Athearn, Mantua HO Freight Cars

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
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I am looking to upgrade the trucks on some of my HO Athearn and Mantua cars. (When I say Mantua, I mean the older Mantua/Tyco era when the cars had metal underframes.)

I want to get metal 50-ton Bettendorf trucks, preferably with springs. I have, though, on occasion picked up some trucks that do not fit these cars: Either the holes are too small, or the height is wrong, or a combination of the two.

Does anyone know which contemporay brands will work on Athearn and/or Mantua cars? Thanks in advance.

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If the holes are too small, you have to drill them out. If the car comes out too high, you have to file something down. Note, in many years of checking coupler height, I have had a lot of low couplers, don’t remember every having a high coupler.

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If you are thinking of the style of Mantua/Tyco car floors that I am (circa 1962) then the bolster situation on car frame and truck for them is of such a proprietary style that is not easily matched with other after market trucks. (To make matters even more challenging, the axle on the Mantua/Tyco 33" wheels of that era is also not what is usually encountered – it is thinner and more pointed at the ends – although NWSL may have a drop in replacement. I think I found my replacement RP25 wheels from NJ International but I am not even sure they are in the wheel business any longer).

It will take modifications to the body bolster and to be frank, replacing the entire floor with something different might make more sense and be easier. One possibility, although I have not done the work myself, is the Central Valley aftermarket underframe. http://www.shop.cvmw.com/40ftSteelUnderFrameKit-3-1000.htm Were I do to the project I have such a large collection of Athearn underframes that I would probably use one of them, bare bones and inaccurate though they may be in many ways. I am not sure the Mantua plastic body is worthy of the Central Valley underframe unless you are a miracle worker such as Doctor Wayne.

Dave Nelson

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Is your desire to change the trucks because you don’t like their appearance, or is it just for performance reasons? Better quality wheelsets from Intermountain, ExactRail, Reboxx or other brands oftren eliminate performace issues with the stock plastic wheelsets entirely. Changing wheelsets is also less expensive than swapping out the trucks.

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Thanks all for the replies. To answer some of the questions/responses:

I am looking to swap them for a combination of performance and aesthetic reasons. I don’t like the look of the plastic trucks associated with the blue-box era of Athearn. At the same time, I have many yellow-box-era Athearn cars, and the metal on a few of the trucks has started to fatigue. They do not perform well anymore. So, I would like to get newer, metal trucks, preferably with springs, and preferably that won’t require modification.

As for the Mantua/Tyco cars, the desire for new trucks is mostly for performance reasons. I have some problematic axles, and I have never found a good way to remove the axles and wheels from the metal Mantua trucks; if there is a trick, I would love to know. The only way that I have found is by bending the steel horizontal bar running between the two sides, but my success rate in bending these bars back into shape for ideal functionality has varied. I would like either trucks with the couplers attached, like the originals; or, I can upgrade to non-coupler trucks and mount new couplers to the underframes. They do not have to look exactly like the originals; ideally, they will look better, more like the Athearn trucks.

As far as the height and hole size in the contemporary trucks, I realize that I can drill the hole bigger or file down the height, but I was hoping to find trucks right out of the package that would fit either Athearn, Mantua, or, preferably, both. If these do not exist, then I can modify the other brands. But I would like to know definitively either way if the right size trucks are being made by anyone.

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Don’t forget that you can compensate for altered car height with offset-knuckle couplers (assuming you are using Kadees). At our club, we have a ban on talgo (truck-attached) couplers: When you are running longer trains with properly-weighted cars, when the slack comes in a talgo coupler can knock the truck right off the track.

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As has already been mentioned, you can drill-out holes which are too small or fill and re-drill ones that are too large. Filing down either body- or truck bolsters can lower a too-high car, while spacer washers from Kadee (or homemade ones) will raise a car that’s too low.

It’s unlikely that you will find sprung trucks with Talgo-style (attached) couplers, and I would strongly suggest that you convert those Tyco/Mantua cars to body-mounted couplers. They’ll not only look better, but will perform better, too.

Kadee offers sprung metal trucks in several styles, but most of them (at least the older ones which I have) have a very small hole for the mounting screw - not difficult to enlarge it, though. Kadee has recently gone to non-sprung trucks, although I don’t know if they’re phasing out the sprung ones or merely offering more choices. While I always liked sprung trucks (besides Kadee, Athearn, Model Die Casting, Central Valley, Train Miniature, Lindberg, and many others offered sprung trucks at one time), they don’t look all that realistic, especially compared to some of the more recent non-sprung releases from companies such as Tahoe Model Works, Tangent, Atlas, Bowser, and Kadee. After all, a real truck has a number of springs in each side of it, and there’s very little of a see-through nature to them.

In light of that, I recently gathered up a bunch of my cars equipped with Kadee trucks and performed an easy modification to them which, in my opinion, improves their realism.

For the first ones, I simply cut up some Kadee #5 coupler boxes and used ca to cement appropriately-sized pieces of black plastic behind the springs. This eliminates the unprototypical see-through look, although on most of mine it also eliminated any benefit of having real springs, as the sideframes are now rigidly attached to the truck bolsters. It doesn’t seem to affect the performance, but with a little care, the pi

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Top notch work as always, Wayne! I like the trick of backing up the Kadee springs with some black plastic to stop the see-through effect. I only have a very few Kadee sprung trucks, but I think I’ll try that.

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I appreciate your very detailed response, and your work is excellent. I will check out some of the brands you mentioned for metal trucks. I have always liked the look of metal sprung trucks, but my main point of reference for comparison has been the cheap plastic trucks that lack detail. It is good to know that there are other options.

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Far be it for me to try to gild the lily Wayne has presented, but as part of a weathering clinic I recently presented, I showed that sometimes the big problem with “cheap plastic trucks” is not so much their lack of detail as the glossy black bare plastic that makes the trucks almost disappear in normal viewing, and that painting those trucks (and wheels) almost any plausible weathered color from charcoal gray to rusty brown to even dark olive (Floquil’s late lamented grimy black was basically a dark olive color) can make a surprising amount of detail pop out.

I passed around some typical trainset quality cars showing one side and one end weathered, the other side and end not weathered, and that extended to the truck sideframes; one end with talgo mounted horn hook couplers, the other end with body mounted knuckle couplers. I made no other modifications or detail improvements to the cars for this demonstration purpose, because the chief point is just to show what simple weathering can do to even the most lowly item of RTR rolling stock.

This popping out of detail on weathered plastic trucks is as true for Athearn plastic trucks (which actually have pretty good detail) as it is for Bachmann, AHM (sometimes clunkier trucks), LifeLike, Varney, and Tyco/Mantua. That said, Kadee trucks are beautiful models, and less generic.

Wayne’s clever modification for sprung trucks is a fine enhancement, and typically creative thinking on his part.

Dave Nelson

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Thanks again everyone. Pardon me for being a luddite, and not to take the thread off-topic, but some of the truck brands that Wayne suggested offer trucks with wheels in either “semi scale” and “normal tread.” I assume that normal tread is what was typically found on most HO cars through the decades?

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Good to know, thank you!

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Shock Control - Yes, normal tread is the standard, for years.

Semi-scale is the code 88 wheelsets, which, while they are finer and closer to scale, are also more temperamental to operate with.

Not saying it can’t be done reliably, but that the code 88 takes more work…

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Hello all,

Take a look at this thread: http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/13/t/249039.aspx regarding sprung versus unsprung trucks.

My pike is a coal branch loop based on Tyco operating hopper cars manufactured in the 1970’s.

These cars were originally Talgo trucks with truck mounted couplers.

At first I used the Talgo coupler adapters from Kadee.

These were convenient but did not decrease derailments due to the truck mounted couplers.

I then went to Kadee sprung trucks. I modified the car frames to accept body mounted couplers.

The sprung trucks looked nice but on certain trackage, with loaded cars, I still had derailment problems.

I decided to Super Glue the trucks to “lock-out” the sprung function of the trucks; as was discussed in the above thread. In my situation this worked.

After talking with the Kadee folks at a local train show I decided to go with the Kadee High Gravity Compound split bolster trucks. This required further modification of the frames of the vintage 1970’s cars.

As far as Semi-scale versus Normal tread take a look at what Kadee has to say on this topic.

Hope this helps.

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That’s correct: the semi-scale wheels have a thinner tread width than what has been considered “normal” for some time. There are also wheels with true “scale width”, but those are for modellers working in so-called Proto 87, where trackwork is built to prototypically scaled standards to accomodate such wheels.
Proto 87 (there are Proto versions in other scales, too, usually those larger than HO) also uses trucks which match the narrower wheels, whereas most modellers using semi-scale wheels do so in the same trucks that use normal width wheels. This leaves an unprototypical gap between the wheel faces and the back face of the truck sideframes. To me (one who uses mostly plastic wheels), the shiny tread of metal wheels, semi-scale or normal width, only draws ones eyes to that area and the either overly-wide normal tread or the somewhat narrower semi-scale one with the wider-than-normal gap.
The semi-scale wheels generally require a little more attention to your trackwork than do the regular ones, but I’ve run them without difficulty on my layout, where I would consider the trackwork average. It was only after a comment by a friend (who does use semi-scale wheels and has meticulously-laid track) when he noticed a car running with such wheels on my layout, that I realised that I had unwittingly bought a couple pair of Tahoe trucks with semi-scale wheels. [:-^] He later bought the same style trucks with normal wheels and a trade was made.

Were I considerably younger, I’d certainly be interested in Proto 87, but at this stage of the game, wide plastic wheels and wide shiney metal wheels don’t bother me enough to worry about it.

Dave’s comments on weathering are go

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Many plastic trucks are of high quality, with wheelsets that perform well. Compare the following:

Above is a Kadee sprung truck in metal, representing one variation of a 50-ton solid bearing truck.

And next is another 50-ton truck in plastic from Tangent Scale Models. The Tangent truck has more detail, and the springs are far closer to scale than the Kadee metal springs.

Kadee is slowly replacing their metal sprung trucks with versions like this one cast in their “high gravity compound” plastic. Again these have better detail than their metal trucks.

Nearly all the cars on my layout have plastic trucks. With appropriate weathering and paint even the relatively undetailed ones tend to look reasonable from normal viewing distances. From left to right above are trucks from ExactRail, Proto 2000 and Atlas.

At left here is an old train set car from Cox. With some weathering I don’t find the trucks objectionable at all. I replaced the original plastic wheels with metal.

This Athearn blue box car retains its original trucks, although I substituted machined metal wheelsets. These are from JayBee. I tried a couple packages of them but came to prefer other brands like Intermoun

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I think I am learning that. I guess it is the glossiness that is the main stumbling block for me. I will take Wayne’s advice and try painting some in flat charcoal grey.

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Nice photo’s as always Rob!

Shock Control, a little weathering of the trucks will get rid of unrealistic shine and improve the appearance greatly.

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This conversation begs the question: Why did so many companies manufacture glossy trucks? Is shiny plastic cheaper than dull plastic?

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My understanding is that most trucks (and many other detail parts) are molded in so-called ‘engineering plastics’ (eg: Delrin), which are very durable and take/hold detail well, at the tradeoff of being shiny and difficult to paint when raw.

Which brings me to my question: I’ve seen MR articles recommend ‘adhesion promoters’ (as opposed to a simple ‘primer’) for painting these parts multiple times in the past year - can anyone comment on their use/necessity? I’m in the process of going to all acrylic paints for my hobbies, as much as feasible, and it’s been an adjustment, with some failures.