I bought a set of Undec 5 car set for my California Zepher And then bought a CB&Q car as an add on but noticed the the Cars don't couple like they should!!! The CB&Q car is lower. How can I fix this? Jimmy J Matta San Antonio, TX
How much lower? I'm assuming you mean the coupler height is lower. It's possible that replacing the 33" wheelsets on the CB&Q car with 36" could raise the coupler height if the difference is not too much. Intermountain and Fox Valley Models sell 36" wheelsets. Or you could replace the trucks on the CB&Q car with those like on the 5 car set. Ben
This is not related to the Concor passenger car issue but still relating to Concor cars. I am looking for Concor 2 bay ribside open hopper cars. These cars were loosely based on a prototype that apparently did not find a lot of favor among RR's. The only ones I could find that had something similar were the Frisco and the L& N. The car appears similar to a GSC car of the early fifties. Anyway if anyone knows of where to find any of these please post. These cars are distinguishable from the MT 2 bay ribside hopper design by the eight full side panels instead of the six of the MT design. Thanks to all.
Those cars were originally imported by Atlas. I don't think they match any L&N cars though. Well maybe it's sorta like this: http://members.tripod.com/appalachian_railroad/protophotos/lnps3_2.jpg But the Atlas/Concor car sits way too high.
The cars in question are stock Pullman Standard PS3 Twin Hoppers. They were built for the L&N and CRR. The N Models are a bit off proportion but that is what the car was based on. The Con-Cor model is from the Roco / Atlas tooling. Mehano made copies of this car that were sold by Model Power. I am not sure if Model Power copied the car in China or not. Walthers had some made by Roco that had L&N lettering. Charlie Vlk
Ah that's good and bad. Good in that I could use some correct ones. Bad that they are way too tall. I bought some way back when they were offered by Atlas. They were the same height as the 90/100 ton Atlas hoppers. I guess if you take some height off the top they'd be pretty close eh? ConCor 50 Ton 2 Bay Hopper
I am a little late in getting to this thread but first I wanted to say thanks to all who have contributed info on the PS3s because I now have a better understanding of what they were like. Also, you can add Tennessee Central (9500-9699) and Southern Railway (110650-110824), the SOU cars coming from the TC with the dividing of that line amoung L&N, SOU and IC. "They were the same height as the 90/100 ton Atlas hoppers." Good reason... the model represents an 80T coal hopper which would have the higher sides... L&N rebuilt some of their hoppers to the larger capacity, though, with careful work a person should be able to cut down the height (10' 8" according to the Southern diagram) and rework the ladder rungs to a more appropriate appearance. Again, let me say thanks... finally I know all I needed to know about these cars and I do appreciate it!!!
Con Cor has used different couplers over the years. Lately they can be bought with Microtrains couplers pre installed. Some have the knuckle coupler that Con Cor developed. It has a lot of problems including being too low and not staying coupled very well. I replaced all mine with either the Unimate or Kato couplers.
I second what Russel says about the CC passenger cars. I trplaced the trucks and couplers with Micro Trains. In the past, I used the Unimates and they worked great for these type cars.
I never even thought about the Unimates. Duh! And I have several packages of the medium shank if it is long enough. The Kato couplers were too short unless one of the diaphrams between cars was removed. I went with MT trucks for some of mine but that gets expensive. Ben
A very tedious but doable modification to the Con Cor trucks will allow them to hold the Kato couplers and retain both diaphragms. I take a sharp Xacto and shave the inside vertical face on each side of the coupler pocket until it is quite thin. This allows the coupler to extend farther out. With that, and Intermountain 36 inch wheels, the old Con Cor trucks perform very well. I did this to my entire Budd Sunset Limited trainset and it runs trouble free on most any NTRAK layout. I wanted to retain the type of truck that the Con Cor is modeled after as that is the prototype that ran on that train. They were built for Budd with disk brakes so there were no clasp brake shoes or brake cylinders showing on the side frames.
I did my B&O soothside set with the original Kato passenger car dummy type couplers. They fit quite well with very close coupling. They are a great match to the new con cor Budd car dummies as well. They also work well on my old Atlas / Rivarossi cars. You can't switch off but I don't do that anyway. RICK
I too use the IM 36" wheelsets with the old Kato coupler. I remove the diaphragm from one end of the Concor Budd cars rather than Russ' method. I also run Ntrak so I don't know how these will operate on tight curvatures.
