I have 15 Athearn coal porters. When running these in a 50+ coal train, the Athearn would arbitrarily uncouple. I converted all 15 to MT trucks w/ low pro running on C55 track. Now I am having a difficult time keeping these cars on the track. The hole in the MT truck is much larger than the bolster pin it sits on and I am guessing that the play in the truck is the culprit. I am hoping that someone has a solution. Has anyone body mounted on these cars? Has anyone run into this problem and have an answer? Paul f
I have body mounted MT Z scale couplers on mine because the origonal accumates couple too far apart, I've run a 30 car train ok on the club's Ntrak layout.
I haven't body mounted couplers on these but as soon as I got my first set the accumates had to go and MT's put on. To do this I just knock of lip that the original trucks pivot on, whether it be with a file, xacto, etc. I then drill out the screw hole big enough to snuggly fit either of the supplied bolster pins from MT and then install my MT coupler/truck and we are good to go. Pretty much this is how I do it on all the Athearn cars I've converted over to MT's.
Washers Paul, I ran into a similar problem with Bachmann types. The older cars use a larger then life phillips head screw. The hole in the B truck is large and fits over a type of built in bolster and the screw goes down through the middle. I wanted to use MT's freight trucks so I cut off the plastic and filed it smooth. This created all kind of sloop/play so I looked through my collection of bolts, nuts and washers finding a few that the screw fit through the center and the washer snugly fit into the MT hole. Did the trick. Tonight, to my dismay as I started to follow the same procedure on another B box car I discovered, I had used up my supply. I will take one out of a finished conversion and see if I can find a match at the hardware store. I take it you cut away the Athearn coupler from the freight truck, keeping the truck in place and body mounted a MT coupler. That's a good idea. Must submit to memory bank. Remember what? For me case closed.
Rick, seems you must be having a little trouble remembering things just like I do. There is an excellent website that has all the information you would need to improve your memory....Uh...the address is.....uhh..... I'll let you know when I think of it.
