I’ve been gobbling up on scale Weaver boxcars on Ebay. Been real lucky and got pretty much every one I bid for. Today I took delivery on a B&O Timesaver boxcar. Here’s a pic of it:
Before I opened the box I heard a rattling inside. I immediately thought “uh-oh…something’s broken”.
When I opened the Weaver box and slid the boxcar out, two pair of wheelsets and one side plate were missing. I found them inside the box. Fortunately, they weren’t broken. The side plate appears to snap on to fasten the two wheelsets onto the truck. The wheels spun, but not easily. I remembered seeing some Weaver boxcars advertised on Ebay that gave a choice of plastic or diecast metal trucks. I went on the Weaver website and sure enough, there are sprung trucks and a higher quality diecast couplers available:
They aren’t cheap, at $16.95 to fully equip a boxcar, but I think they are probably worth the money. I have six Weaver boxcars that need to be re-equipped with these. So it’ll take a while to get them all done. Kinda like re-equipping Protosound 1/2 locos with the BCR replacements. [:)]
In my experience, the plastic trucks are worthless. I have a pair of covered hoppers that use to have to go at the back of the train or they would derail. I put die-cast trucks on one, and that one now tracks every bit as well Atlas, as well as the Lionel cars that are a few years old. They’re not quite up to the level of recent Lionel trucks(with rotating bearing caps), which, in my opinion are the best high-rail trucks available, but still a significant improvement. It’s an upgrade definitely worth the price and minimal effort involved.
In the future, unless you get a really great deal, I’d suggest just investing in die-cast trucks from the get-go. It will save a few bucks, since you’ll generally only pay about a $10 premium at the time of purchase, rather than $17 down the road. I believe that current production Weaver cars all have die-cast from the factory.
Dep not sure if weaver sells them to hobby shops or not but thought it would be worth a try either way give lee a try and see what he can do hes only there t-f 10-5 closed 12-1 lunch east coast time and sat 9 to 1
Got a bunch of Weaver scale NS and NW hopper cars. Took the plastic trucks off and gave them away to someone who loves them. Put K-Line diecast trucks in their place. I bought up a bunch of semi-scale K-Line hoppers when they were going bankrupt. Got the K-Lines at a steal. So, now I have great running scale Weaver hopper cars.
I tried a set of the plain old Lionel sprung trucks(the ones that have been around since the '70s), and they made the hopper ride way too high. That was even after I spent a while with my dremel hacking away as much of the truck bolster as I could.
Do the K-line trucks allow them to ride at a reasonable height?
