I recently aquired 33 Atlas Coalveyers from eBay. I noticed that half of these cars had the original Accumate trucks/couplers while the other half, the prevoius owner of these cars had taken Micro-Trains trucks and put Atlas Accumate couplers in their pockets. I do like it since the cars couple much closer together but the Micro-Trains Low Profile wheels just look stupidly small on these cars that would normally have 36" wheels. It's one of the thing that I did like about the Micro-Trains pizza cutters. They gave the illusion of the bigger wheels. So I started playing around one night with some Intermountain 36" metal wheelsets. They fit way too tightly in the stock Micro-Trains trucks and would not turn easily. So I took a pin vise and with a .063" drill and a .045" drill, started slowly removing some plastic from the bearing holes in the truck. I really didn't expect it to work but I was pleasantly suprised with the results. I only remove enough material for the wheels to just spin freely. Doing it in several steps makes it harder to mess them up. The best part is that the metal axle points seem to burnish themselves in after they are run around the layout a bit. Now the cars look like thay are supposed to and I can run them on Atlas Code 55 without problems. Does Atlas sell just the couplers that fit in the truck pockets? I'd kind of like to do more of these up the same way I did the Coalveyors and have even considered doing all my modern tank cars too.
I'll try that- the gaps between my (cheap) cars are frustrating. As an aside, your animated happy lady is disturbing
