After much experiementing (I have some new stlye underframes that don't have homes yet) I found the best fix is patience - if I put a flat piece of metal (expansion slot cover from computer works perfectly) between the truss rods and the top of the underframe so they are stretched quite a bit and leave it for days, they end up stretched sufficiently (platic creep) while they are not trying to warp the car in the wrong direction during the process.  They look good in a day or two but return slowly towards their original length, so it takes a few days or more to get enough permanant stretch.

I then leave them on a pair of trucks with a can of beans flexing the center down for another week then it finally comes out flat and does not leave a gap between the draft gear box and the car body.

Would have been a lot easier for bachmann just to have made the truss rods slightly longer to accomodate the new longer path length...  (I noticed that the new ones were the same length when I took one off an old underframe to replace one of the new ones I had melted.)

I am still hesitant to buy more Bachmann until they fully step up to the gear problems.  I understand the Shay has a fix, so I have taken mine off the shelf along with my Climax and run it quite a bit to see if I have the failure while the gears are still available.  I know I am risking that the Climax will join my railtruck for display only but so far so good for both geared locos.  Is there such a thing as a "good" shay (i.e. tolerances happen to line up not to split or allow the gear to spin) or is it a matter of time?  I had contemplated buying new ones with sound or adding it, but hate to put more money into them, especially where there is no fix on the Climax.

From previous post I understand that Bachmann will not replace or fix the rail truck, just trade for a rail bus that I don't want - anyone had a different experience?

Thanks to all for the advice - after destroying another tight truss rod trying to control a heat gun, I was able to get just the right amount of permanent stretch using water that just stopped boiling.  Hot tap water was not enough to do it for the particular material for the ones I tried, although there does  appear to be a material change beween the older and newer cars.

I put a piece of slightly curved sheet metal between the truss rods and the queenposts which stretches the truss rods and even flexes the whole frame.  By suspending it into the near boiling water so only the truss rods were submerged, they softened up and stretched enough so that when I took out the metal after cooling they were about right.  They don't droop noticeably but don't have any tension left to warp the underframe.  To finish up I put the frame on a pair of trucks and set a bean can on it for a few days to work out the bow from all the time spent with tight truss rods.

Many of us probably have these available to sell from converting some cars to the low frame archbar trucks - I have converted a number of cars to match the SR&RL pulpwood cars to pull with my Forney.   Please post if you would like to buy some from a forum member.

Did some digging and now understand that having all red or green and red glowing all the time or even with direction are not the correct use of marker or classification lights.  I will leave them alone, no need to change the front ones to green (unless I plan to run trains that are split up into more than one unit...)

Just got my first WBB loco, BL-2, after a lot of Bachmann On30.  Happy with the detail and features for the money.  Two minor detaiils I would like to address however.

1.  Paint is great except too shiny - is the paint compatible with Testors dullcoat or is there another suggestion?

2.  Marker lights are great on a loco of this price range, but - all four are red.  Does  anyone know a source for similar sized marker lenses that are green?

Just did the series wiring change, hopefully the horn will work at less than 100 scale mph now.  I may install an MCR sound unit and it also requires a fair minumum voltage.

Have been having problems with bowed underframes of the new low frame type caused by the trussrods being too tight.  It makes the ends of the underframe and coupler pocket droop down and leave a gap to the body.

I have found this on the replacement underframes and some but not all of the cars that come with the lower frame.

My fix so far is to put a piece of sheetmetal between the truss rods and the underframe as a heat shield, and then heat them with a heat gun to soften them.  They are stretched by putting the heat shield between them and the frame.  Of 5 I did, on two of them I overdid it and melted them - it is touchy.  For those I cut off ones from underframes I was replacing.

Any better ideas, and has anyone found replacement frames without this problem?  The older cars and some of the new ones like the pulpwood car have a softer material that stretches and does not cause this problem.

Now that we will have our caboose to go with the Forney and pulp cars, what about releasing the other basic freight cars with SR&RL including the low frame arch bar?  I do plan to do at least one unlettered car but by the time I buy decals, arch bar trucks, maybe underframes and couplers (and scrounge the right length screws) if the unlettered cars are too old, it would be more than it would be worth.  (Plus  my decals never look as good as Bachmann lettering.)

While there is no lower passenger truck yet, I would also like to see the green passenger cars with Sandy River and Rangely Lakes - I am ok with the representative caboose and fairly generic freight cars, so it is only a little more stretch to the passenger cars...just don't look in the windows

(I like the new caboose, the real SR&RL ones were all a little different and the Bachmann window counts on either side of door do have examples ... just not on the same car!   "Selective compression" the O 3 railers call it when something is shortened but not reduced in overall scale to maintain a "look",  making it more practical for tight curves and small layouts.)

A "short" SR&RL caboose is mentioned in this post, I am only familiar with a few "long" SR&RL cabooses like the ones that MountBlue offers, and have already bought the kit that goes on a Bachmann coach chassis to represent one with some compromises.

Is there a two foot protytpye that is represented by one of the variants of the short MountBlue caboose that fits over the bachmann caboose floor?  I took those to be generic short cabooses, but I still like the look better than the Bachmann one with the narrow cupola.

I do have both on a simple oval layout.  The physical size difference is striking where they come together, even if you use some of the 3 rail stuff that is undersized for tight curves ("O27").  I plan to incorporate an interchange with O-3 rail in any future layout for the contrast and for a reason for the On30 to go to meet it.

However, even if you stick with the newer well-detailed scale size 3 -rail stuff so that most of the dimensions are correct, when it comes to comparing the rails, flanges and couplers, there is a gross discrepancy left over from the "toy" days of Lionel 3 - rail.  We worry about code 72, 83 or 100 which are all pretty close to some narrow guage application, but the rails for even the most correct-appearing 3 - rail versions such as Atlas O come up to the knee of an O scale person, one coupler would fill a scale pickup bed, and the flanges (and tread width) are also grossly oversize compared to the On30 equivalent.  Using HO couplers in On30 to represent the larger couplers of the Colorado 3 footers just makes it even worse.  (Of course there is the minor issue of 3 rails - and it does not look like 3' dual gage!)

Also note that O guage, 3 rail or traditional O 2 rail is actually over 56.5" by convention unless you go to Proto:48, and of course our On30 is actually a little over 30" and certainly not quite right for 2 or 3 foot guage.

  If you don't have a current investement in 3-rail like I do, I would  recommend starting in scale O 2-rail for your interchange with On30, although not necessarily the perfect scale "proto:48", (afterall if you're in this forum you may already have accepted some compromises) You can now get most of the better 3 rail manufacterer's models in 2 rail versions to go with better sized 2 rail flex or sectional track and even close to scale couplers.  Some offer these as options and some can be retrofitted.  I noticed in the Williams forum interest in seeing the Bachmann / Williams include these optoions.

I have a few of the pulpwood cars which have the "low frame arch bar" truck and the new underframe with nearly flat bolster.  This truck needs a small black spacer to work on the pulpwood, and would need this to be put with the replacement lower frame or some of the later cars that come with the lowered frame.  They also need a longer machine screw to go with the spacer I think.

These trucks purchased separately come with generic "wood" screws to use on a scratchbuilt, but please make available the spacer and longer screws to fit the new frame.  They could be packaged with the trucks along with the generic screws, since they would only be used with them. 

What is the prototype for these trucks?  I think I first saw them on the logging cars, they look good on the two foot style pulpwood (other than the extra width) but they are significantly higher and longer than the Grandt Line SR&RL trucks. 

Thanks

My Forney does not have a coupler height problem with a center shank, but do check to make sure the knuckle is at the right height and it is only the "air hose" that is too low.  If the whole coupler seems to be low and there is not a problem with the rear truck making the whole engine slope down to the rear, you might be able to try an undershank coupler from one of the other cars.

This would be similar to the case of the original cabooses which came with the whole coupler too low and could be corrected by swapping the overshank for a center shank.

Sounds like useful stuff.  I assume the new underframes will go with the new archbar trucks like on the pulpwood car, so it would be good to offer the archbar trucks in a matching 3 pack for scratchbuilding or converting existing cars to the SR&RL style.  That might also keep the price down, it would be easy for the trucks plus the underframes to come out close to the discounted price of the whole car!

I have tried the previous style trucks on the pulpwood just to check, and without the spacer it comes out the same height so no adjustment is needed if you want just to use the new underframe to convert the height while retaining the old trucks.  Note that the pulpwood requires an overshank coupler because the coupler box is not raised as much as it would need to be to use the more realistic center shank.  There is still a hint of an upper vacant coupler box on the pulpwood, I would think once it is lowered this far it would look better to put a center shank in its own box at the right height without a dummy vacant one above -- see Harolds conversions.

Bachmann - Please make sure either the underframe packs or the archbar trucks come with the black spacer that is required to match the archbar with the underframes - the archbar single pack that I bought did not have them.  (They would not be used if reusing trucks on a retrofit)

I have replaced most of mine from this era with the Bachmann EZ mate II which is what comes with the newer cars.  Make sure to get the right shank offset to match, the passenger cars you bought and most of the older freight cars came with "overshank" medium length EZ mates, although some of the cabooses needed to be replaced with center shank to get the right height.   (Look at the various ones in the hobby shop to see the difference)

The Bachmann EZ mate II are similar to and compatible with Kadee, so you can mix some Kadee replacements without replacing the ones on newer Bachmann.

If I had it to do over again, however, I might have made the modification mentioned here frequently to lower just the freight cars slightly by shaving off the boss on the top of the truck bolster, in which case they come out about right with center shank couplers and look a little better to most eyes - apparently there was a range of how low narrow guage cars really looked but the classic "hunkered down" look of the D&RGW and the two foot guage eastern roads is what most people envison.  I now have a bunch of cars for which I have bought the overshank replacements and am now contemplating replacing again with centershank after lowering.

The passenger cars are not so easy to lower, so for the ones you have the simplest solution is straight replacement with the right Bachmann or KD

There are more elaborate lowering and coupler replacement schemes that can look even better, but can be quite a project if you have to do a lot - see Harold's website.

I had a similar situation a few years ago and proceeded as follows with certain success -- see postscript:  Many years after abandoning a very limited surviving HO collection I discovered both the emergence of ON30, rekinding a long dormant interest in narrow guage, and the emergence of fairly realistic O scale 3 -rail trains that could still be operated by a 5 year old.  My son's interest in trains was entirely in the wooden train Thomas vein at the time, and included much layout building and rebuilding. 

I bought an MTH starter set and some extra MTH track (similar to EZ track with integrated roadbed) and a Lionel Thomas 0-27 set that he could run on the same tracks, and an ON30 C&S set for me.  The Thomas could be run on the floor temorarily, and a 4 x 8 "temporary" layout was built with an EZ track "ON30" loop around a two path MTH O-31 oval, a mountain and some roads and buildings.  He was really too young to be interested to help with the layout at the time, and became more interested in computers and video games than trains -- but I still get to dabble in the hobby a few years later.  I am mostly pursuing On30, but certain near scale size and detailed O-3 rail trains(except track, wheels and couplers) are part of my short and long term layout plans for the interchange point.

The post script for my son is as follows - we build a few computers together to follow that interst, but once he had the performance he needed , his computer game interests went to... simulating the building,  riding, and operation of roller coasters, right down to having to engineer them to work and run the theme park business... not exactly trains but close.  After a while he got into building "real" model roller coasters, and is part of a small following who buy up multiple Knex roller coaster kits on E-bay, build elaborate systems, and put them on U-tube for each other to comment and critique - a bit like our fourm here but multi-media. 

So in a way he is a chip off the old block, but updated to today - a toddler obsession with Thomas did not turn out to be a lifetime hobby of modelling trains from ancient history, but we can appreciate what each other is doing in the basement...and share a few tips and tools.  He has a much shorter time span for a project than we do - he will spend hours over a few weeks with a new "layout", get it working correctly, take a video, edit and post.. and tear donw to pursue a new design incorporating some more complex addition.

Good luck & as the Bachmann says, "have fun" in the process regardless of the outcome.