Re: Steam Era Freight Car - HO Scale
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Doug Brown <brown194@...>
The "coupler box" is made for the original Mantua loop coupler. It was
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suspended from the end sill rect. hole and the screw holding the loop and hook. The slope in the underframe was to allow the hook to be raised to uncouple. The screw also held the underframe to the floor. The trucks mounted to the underfrane casting. You should be able to unscrew the couplers and trucks, remove the underframe, cut the underframe sloped ends to make room for coupler boxes, mount the couplers (they may stick out a little like a cushioned sill), glue the underframe (with Goo (tm) or equivalent) to the floor and put the trucks back on. Steam was still running when the last of these were made. Doug Brown -----Original Message-----
From: STMFC@... [mailto:STMFC@...] On Behalf Of Jim Betz Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2005 7:09 PM To: STMFC@... Subject: [STMFC] Steam Era Freight Car - HO Scale ... as in this -model- might have been around when steam was still running ... *W* I have a really old, all metal, Mantua flat car that actually has pretty fair detail and well done paint and decals. But it has the really old style Kadees that have a long, narrow, rectangular slot in the coupler shank instead of a round hole like a #5 or #58. The paint on this car is nice enough that I think I'll try to rescue it. The biggest problem is that it doesn't have a real coupler pocket like a more modern HO car has - it has a rectangular hole in the end frame and a hole in the fishbelly center sill - but no "pocket". So the coupler doesn't sit "flat" it runs uphill towards the end of the car. I'd really like to mount a standard Kadee box. The current coupler is mounted with a screw and washer thru the slot and no centering/buffer springs - crude but it works ... sort of - nothing to center it if it off line. The existing 'pocket' is considerably smaller than the size of a Kadee box ... but the end frame seems to be cast metal and can be "opened up" with a little care ... Anybody ever tried to file/mill away the coupler pocket and install a traditional Kadee on one of these? Can be done? Don't even go there? - Jim in San Jose Yahoo! Groups Links |
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