A Tad Tricky

How hard can it be to fettle a few tank cars? Down at CLAG the perrenial reply would be "go on then".

Let me list what I did by the end to get those troublesome tank cars running.

1. They sat too high with the replacement Kadee trucks, and the bolster were slightly domed, so I cut them off, and filed the surface flat. I then used a washer to raise the height of the tank car back to the correct height.

2. There are moulded on spring details around the coupler pockets. The overscale flanges were brushing on them as the cars went around the hidden 14 inch reversing curve. I carefully trimmed the moulded spring detail, halving the thickness in a way that means it can't be seen from normal viewing angles i.e. the top, or side on (in the latter case because the channel of the solebar hides what I have done.

3. I disassembled the coupler pockets, filing the edges to remove burrs, and then replaced the pan head screws with a counter-sunk head one's. As I only had screws that were too long I cut them down to size and hand finish them to fit. Then I had to modify the coupler lids so that the screw would then fit in flush.

You can see where the axle was rubbing on the old coupler pocket screw in the picture below.



So all in all, a tad tricky.