Lowering Aristocraft passenger coaches - advice please.

tac foley

tac foley

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Afternoon, All. Well I recently lucked in to a couple of Aristocraft heavyweight passenger cars in Canadian National livery - Beeeyoootiful! My initial plan was to respray them in CPR maroon/Tuscan red, and get Stan Cedarleaf to make me some decals to suit, but these cars are just so beautifully painted that it would be shameful to it that, so I'm leaving them alone.

However, the idea to to make an excursion/rail-fanning train to run behind my Accucraft Royal Hudson, joining in the set of Accucraft smooth-siders I already have, and, of course, they are too high. Lowering them looks like a real job, but I'd like to do it right, hence my question. George Schreyer - the maven of mavens - doesn't mention doing it, although he does provide great guide to replacing the couplings with Kaydees and closing up the humoungous gap. BTW, I have the four wheel trucks, NOT the six-wheel version.

Anyone here done it?

TIA

tac
Ottawa Valley GRS
 
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Could look here http://www.gscale.net/resources/manuals/aristocraft - manuals and parts diagrams. I had a set, 6 cars both 4 and 6 wheel trucks. From what I remember there isn't much meat between the chassis and truck mounts that you can shave off. Possibly a change/turn down of wheel diameter ? Then you'd have to make sure you changed the coupling height to compensate. Or you could try "lowering" the springs. Or a mix of both. Max
 
I think I saw this done, but am not able to find the thread now.. :(

The area around the pivot-mount was cut-out, and then the chassis was built-up inside the loco..
The cut section was then mounted atop this. - I believe it meant the minimum-radius the carriages would negotiate was increased??

They did look better, but it was a h*ll of a lot of work!
 
Of course it's a lot of work, but building these two cars from scratch would be even harder. I know two gentlemen who would make a fine job of doing it, but I presently lack the couple of thousand dollars necessary to make it happen.

Whinemeal, I already have these two cars in my sticky/grubby paws. I'm not fussed about a minimum radius, as my own track has fourteen and fourteen feet six inches radius, and I don't know any guage one tracks that don't have at least 10ft radius tracks for express train running.

tac
Ottawa Valley GRS
 
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In the past I have done the customising of the bolsters under the streamline cars to drop them down and/or the moving up of the complete aluminium floor panel to get the same effect.

The only real way to do anything to drop the 'heavyweight' cars is to attack the bolsters.
But this will cause the coupling tangs to foul the body underside so the rear of the car will have to be 'amended' as well.
 
Tac, I sold a couple of heavyweights to Mike Moore (Aikenback Live Steamers) who planned to convert them to 1/32. I think it involved slicing and dicing - width, height, etc. I can give you his contact info if you PM me.

I had some success with EBT hoppers running them through a Micromark table saw to separate the sides into layers. I suspect you could do the same with the coaches.
 
Ah, the one thing that's stopping me here is a total lack of a Micromark table saw - in fact, any kind of table saw. But thank you for the offer.

tac
 
I think lowering the trucks to the chassis won't really do the trick, even though these cars appear smallish, they are accurate 1:29 reproductions of a somewhat unusual prototype, 72 foot long (I guess they picked that prototype so it could negotiate tighter corners than the more common 80 foot prototypes).

I think you really would have to do some serious surgery.

Greg
 
Thank you all, Gentlemen - I guess that I will stick to figuring out a way to inset the trucks somewhat, since I lack both the means and the ambition to go slicing my two $400 cars into panels for the sale of a 1/4".

I'm happy to follow Mr Schreyer's instructions o body-mounting Kaydees of th correct size - after all, that's what's on the Accucraft cars.

Another thing - MLS requires you to register and join up to see images that are poswted there as insets t posts, rather than simply appearing there - this is not going to happen. I spent almost ten years there before I left.

tac
 
Tac, I was going to post this pic anyway, but MLS made it complicated so I gave up. So just for you, here it is.

full


And here's the truck and coach floor - both flattened and with a washer for truck movement.

full
 
And the thread ended abruptly, if you read the thread, he decides to cut the floor and recess the bolster, this is after he cut off the rib on the truck. Since there was no follow up, I suspect the project failed for all the reasons stated in the thread, me being one of the first to comment on why it won't work with the truck rib completely removed.

Even if you lower it, the scale of the sides and doors will be wrong...

Greg
 
Greg Elmassian said:
And the thread ended abruptly, if you read the thread, he decides to cut the floor and recess the bolster, this is after he cut off the rib on the truck. Since there was no follow up, I suspect the project failed for all the reasons stated in the thread, me being one of the first to comment on why it won't work with the truck rib completely removed.

Even if you lower it, the scale of the sides and doors will be wrong...

Greg
Click to expand...

11 years ago I'd thought about getting an MTH Daylight livery GS-4 to run with my similarly liveried USAT streamliner and Aristo heavyweight sets. My heavyweights were the Mk II versions with the "sliding plate" bolster and rib. They taught this relative newbie all about the importance of having a level track and eliminating reverse curves :D And I worked out alI the fudges on the trucks the good Mr Schreyer had come up with for myself. I hadn't at that point started down the live steam road yet.

First thing I asked myself was , "Will 1:29 stock look right with a 1:32 loco ?" Googled and looked at all the answers/forums that came up and gave up on the idea then and there. They were never going to match in width/height proportions whatever you do, even if they weren't prototypically correct "Daylight" consists to start with anyway. Then again to some that may not be an issue. Max
 
Sigh, Greg, it pains me to admiterate it, but you are right. I'll do what I can, closing up the gap is a priority right now, and see what I can Rube Goldberg for the rest of the job. After all, I AM the guy who converted a plastic kit of a Panther tank into a reasonable facsimile of a post windmill...

Anyhow, the fact remains that over here the number of people able to differentiate between the two types of cars, bearing in mind just how different they are in reality, might be counted on one hand.

BTW, I remember derPeter on MLS, and as you say, the thread ended abruptly [I just looked it up, based on Fred's post], so I'm guessing that he likely stuck his head in the oven over it.

tac
 
tac foley said:
...
Anyhow, the fact remains that over here the number of people able to differentiate between the two types of cars, bearing in mind just how different they are in reality, might be counted on one hand...
Click to expand...
That's a good point that aficionados forget, we are engrossed in our pet subject, era, railway line, but most people who see it don't know anything about it and probably aren't that interested. I might worry that I am mixing rolling stock from different eras on my Saxon narrow gauge layout, but the first question from most people is "where's Saxony?" or more likely "when is Thomas going to appear?". Sigh.
 
Thomas was never in Saxony!
Not in any era!
 
stockers said:
Thomas was never in Saxony!
Not in any era!
Click to expand...


I think that the comment was in the nature of a quip, a jeu des mots, even an attempt - obviously futile - at comedic rherotic intended to cause a measure of amusement [in some].

tac, sigh...................
 
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