Rebuilding an Inexpensive HO Scale Tank Car
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- čas přidán 1. 07. 2024
- EVERY TIME I complete one of these freight car rebuild videos, I think “that’s the end.” But then I think of another, completely different, project I’d like to try...
Links to items mentioned in this video. (Note: I am NOT endorsing any particular product(s), nor am I compensated by or connected to any of the companies mentioned.) I do NOT guarantee that these links will give you the best available price! Consider these links to be a starting point for your search.
MATERIALS:
AB Brake components: www.tichytraingroup.com/Shop/...
Phosphor-Bronze wire: www.tichytraingroup.com/Shop/... I used 0.0125” (1” OD) for the brake piping, and I used 0.020” (1¾” OD) for the train line and for the handrail. You can also form your own hand grabs from 0.0125” wire, but you’ll need a bending jig to make uniform sizes. These are available from several manufacturers including American Model Builders, BMLA, Grandt Line, and Micro-Mark.
Brake Mechanical Linkage: www.accurail.com/accurail/brak... This set also includes stirrups steps designed to fit Accurail’s kits - I’ve not found a way to use these on other cars.
Hand grabs: www.tichytraingroup.com/Shop/.... I used 18” straight grabs for the car ends and 24” straight for the car body.
Stirrup steps: www.tichytraingroup.com/Shop/... For this project, I chose #3042 Angled Offset Bottom Mount steps.
Brass Ladders: Brass ladder stock seems to get harder to find every year. Here are two possible sources:
- Seaport Model Works seaportmodelworks.com/product... These ladders are about 20 scale inches wide.
- eBay www.ebay.com/itm/154057247798 These ladders are about 15 scale inches wide.
Styrene tubing for truck bolster/kingpins: Evergreen #224 and #226: evergreenscalemodels.com/coll... You’ll spend $8.37 (plus tax and shipping) for one pack of each size, and you’ll have enough tubing to remount over 100 pairs of trucks.
Truck sideframes: www.accurail.com/accurail/part... You can buy either Bettendorf or roller-bearing trucks. Accurail models the open-ended roller-bearing trucks, which became popular in the mid 1960s.
Metal wheelsets: www.intermountain-railway.com... Use 33” wheels for cars with a Load Limit up to 70 tons; above that, use 36” wheels.
Decals: k4decals.com/collections/tank... In addition to specific freight car, locomotive, and passenger car decals, K4 offers a huge selection of letters, number, and stripes in a variety of sizes and any of eight different colors.
Circus City Paint Patch Decals: circusdecals.ecwid.com/produc...
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This video was edited using Shotcut for Linux. Video footage and still images were recorded using a Galaxy A10e phone and a Nikon D7100 camera. - Zábava
Update: Accurail is back in production of the brake rigging tree. I ordered a couple of packages and just now started test fitting on my rebuilt Tyco gondola. It fits perfectly! All I had to do was drill out one mounting hole at one end and three little divots at the other end. The only change I made was to snip off the brake cylinder and carefully sand down the top and bottom of the lever arm where it had been attached. As I was already using Cal-scale brake parts I wanted to keep their cylinder. I removed and remounted it to engage the lever arm. I had already done the air piping except for the line to the brake cylinder and that should go pretty quickly.
Thank you so much for your videos! Without it I'd have never known the brake rigging was available as a drop-in assembly. That will save hours of work per car!
Email me a photo, please!
Very well done step-by-step tutorial. Thank you.
Wow, your attention to detail is great! I don't think I'd have that kinda patience to do such detailed work. I do good just cutting off talgo truck couplers and installing body mounted Kaydee couplers & replacing plastic wheels with metal wheel sets. Cheers from eastern TN
Somehow, these projects always seem to grow. I start by replacing the wheelsets and installing body-mounted couplers. Then I realize that the stirrup steps look really clunky, so I need to replace them; and as long as I am replacing the stirrup steps, I may as well replace the oversized ladders... And before you know it, I end up saving the body shell and most of the underframe but replacing everything else. Oh, well - these are fun projects: low stress and pretty quick and easy: most of the work was finished in a week, working one or two hours a day.
Suggestions: Strip the existing paint off before repainting. Repaint with glossy paint prior to applying decals. Use Solvaset to snuggle decals down. Then apply Dullcote.
You're preaching to the choir! Regarding paint stripping: I'm lazy, and this is a messy step, so I often skip it when I'm rebuilding a cheap model. (See my latest video "Refurbishing an inexpensive Passenger Car" for a notable exception.) In this case, the old lettering shows through just enough that it's obvious that the car has been repainted, and this was a common occurrence in prototype practice, Regarding a gloss coat before decals, I always do this (unless the paint I'm using is already glossy) - it provides the smooth surface necessary to minimize trapping of air bubbles underneath the decal. I primarily use use Micro-Sol (MI-2) on decals to get them to snuggle down - it is less aggressive than Solvaset; but sometimes I have to break out the Solvaset. All of this is explained in my video "Breathing New Life Into Old Freight Cars", so I tend not to repeat it in every video I present. Thanks for watching!
FYI Accurail has been out of stock for a while of the brake rigging casting along with all truck sideframes. They've had a molding machine failed with a die set inside the machine. They only got the dies removed earlier this month and will attempt to begin making up production with a different molding machine as the other one is repaired. They expect to be back up to normal production with items back in stock by December, 2023.
Thanks for the update.
The original tank car was distributed by Model Power. AHM used a similar paint scheme on a different style of tank car as well.
Overall great video, thorough but not overly complex, and well explained. One question/critique, though ... why rust colored trucks, wheels, air reservoir, etc? I believe those would all be black, except for the wheel faces. Brand new wheels would be the bright rust color, but they'd be grimy, oily black after several years due to oil leakage from the backs of the journal boxes.
First, thanks for watching, and thanks for the info on the model manufacturer.
Regarding the wheel color, you are absolutely correct (and this has been pointed out by other viewers of my videos as well) that oil leaking from the journal boxes meant that the wheel faces quickly developed a thick coat of black grime.
I tried several methods of painting the wheel faces black, including using Grimy Black paint, both with and without a little baking soda for texture. I never got a wheel appearance that I liked. Then one day I was sitting at the Amtrak station in Lee's Summit, Missouri and watched a freight train pulling through. Those wheels, because they now use roller bearing trucks, were a uniform rust color, and I liked the contrast of the wheel color and the sideframe color. I tried it, and I liked it, and I've been using it ever since. Is it realistic? No. Is it prototypical? No. But it does produce a truck appearance that is pleasing to me.
In my video "Painting and Weathering Freight Car Trucks", I discuss this very issue.
That looks like a Tyco or Bachman car. I have done brake plumbing on box cars and covered hoppers. I have never done a tank car. Nice work as always.
Tyco cars always have the Tyco brand cast into the truck sideframes - this one did not. I could believe Bachman. Train Miniatures is also a possibility - I have a Train Miniatures tank car with the brake stand cast into the tank body just as this model had.
Very nice work, lots of terrific ideas.
Thanks!
That's a heck of a nice build! Thanks for the lessons!
You're welcome.
Very well done. Thanks for sharing.
Very nice project details are 💯 realistic. Beautiful. 👍🎥
Thank you!
Thanks again, another well-described build. I like that wooden work surface with the Micky Mouse holes, I'm gonna do something like that to replace working on blocks of wood.
That's funny - just yesterday my wife asked if anyone had commented on my Mickey Mouse cutting board.
😄
Great ! and thanks for the many tips in your videos , I'm not that scared of the decaling process anymore :)
Applying decals is like any other modeling task: it gets easier with practice. That's one reason I enjoy rehabbing these cheap cars: if I screw something up, I haven't ruined a $50 model; I'm only out a few dollars and a little time. If you view my video "Breathing New Life..." I explain the decal process in more detail. One additional tip: continue to apply MicroSol (MI-2, the blue bottle) until the decal has snuggled into all of the crevices of the model surface. Only apply Dullcote when you are completely satisfied - after Dullcote, there is nothing you can do to improve the appearance of the decals. Look at the opening few moments of my "Painting and Weathering Freight Car Trucks" video for a great illustration of decals which were NOT properly settled into the surface details of the model.
Some good ideas here but I'm not sure I want to tackle the brake system.
It was surprisingly easy... but once complete, the details are pretty fragile - I broke the mechanical mechanism and had to repair it!
One question.. how did you fill in the holes for the trucks??? I have some old reefers, and I want to install trucks and couplers separately. Also some tank cars. What did you use to fill the holes, and how did you attach the the "filler" to the underframe?? Thanks!
Regarding the truck mounting holes: drill the holes out to 3/16" diameter - use a very low drill speed or the bit will chew up the underframe. Then insert a short (approx. 1/2") length of Evergreen 3/16" tubing and cement in place. I use my go-to styrene cement: Bondene. When dry, insert a short (3/16" + 1mm) length of Evergreen 1/8" tubing. The 1/8" tubing exactly fits the ID of the 3/16" tubing, and 2-56 truck screws fit nicely into the ID of the 1/8" tubing. This process is explained in more detail in my video "Still Breathing..." (czcams.com/video/ck0Y-daCIP0/video.html).
Thanks for a very interesting and informative video. To me, painting is one of my favorite aspects of model (re)building. Any excuse to get out the airbrush. On many occasions I have used handmade stencils to simulate renumber cars.
One question I hope you can answer concerns tank cars that have platforms/safety cages around the top hatch. I've seen lines of tank cars where all have them and lines of cars without. Do you know what determines when a tank car has one? Any information you can share will be greatly appreciated.
I have never found any authoritative explanation as to why some tank cars have platforms and some don’t. However, I worked as a chemical engineer for 45 years, so I can make some pretty good guesses. Here goes:
1. Platforms are only provided in locations where operators have routine tasks to fulfill. This provides a safe working space for the operator. For tank cars, this means that platforms are provided on tank cars which require vapor recovery during loading and unloading. Tank cars are loaded and unloaded from the bottom. Hoses are connected to a valve at the bottom of the tank, and liquid is pumped into or out of tank. If the vapor in the tank can be allowed to escape to the atmosphere, no vapor recovery system is required.
2. Historically, this meant that tank cars in services such as petroleum products, corn syrup, ethanol, sulfuric acid, and caustic (to name a few) would not require platforms.
3. However, tank cars which contain very toxic chemicals - for example, liquid chlorine, anhydrous ammonia, or vinyl chloride monomer - require recovery of the toxic fumes during loading and unloading. In these cases, hoses are connected to a valve on the dome, and those hoses are connected to either supply or recover vapors from the tank during the loading and unloading process. Since an operator is required to be present to connect and disconnect these hoses, platforms are provided.
4. In recent years - that is, since 1963 when the Clean Air Act was passed - more and more fluids conveyed in tank cars have required fugitive emissions controls. This means that more and more services require vapor recovery systems. This is why most - but not all - modern era tank cars are equipped with platforms.
(If you have ever filled your gas tank in California, you probably noticed that there is no gasoline odor in California gas stations. This is because the mandated vapor recovery systems in California have nearly eliminated fugitive emissions in gas stations.)
5. Notice I said “most but not all” tank cars have platforms. This is because a few services by their very nature do not require vapor recovery. The two services that come to mind are LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas, or propane) and LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas); there may be others.
I hope this helps. I also hope that anyone reading this who has better information will correct and expand on what I have said.
@@rwissbaum9849Thank you for your insights. I also had difficulty finding info and thought maybe manufacturers/purchasers preference but that just didn't make much sense. Your explanations seem logical.