Putting new couplers on B and C grade cars

[trainman203]

Some people with very large layouts run very long trains, and need a lot of cars to fill out such a train. I've always modeled a branch line and never had a whole lot of space to start with, so I have always run short trains, nine cars is long for me.  And the most cars my layout can hold is about 30.

When I first started model railroading, I bought cars based on low price and didn't look at the detail quality. Then I started looking at more expensive, but better detailed cars, and went WOW despite the higher price, these look so much better with the finer details such as scale sized stirrups and ladders and separately applied details.

For a while I redetailed the lesser detailed cars with better stirrups and brakewheel and such, and upgraded their performance with Kadee couplers and metal wheels, but they still didn't look as good as the better but more expensive cars, so I slowly got rid of a large number of relative toylike appearing cars in favor of much fewer with enhanced realism.

At this point, I can say for myself, that all the money I spent on couplers, wheels, and details could have been better spent on a few more better detailed cars. 

The downside of these beautiful cars is that they are very fragile compared to cheaper cars. They cannot take handling by children or frequent loading and offloading onto the layout.  They may not be for you. 

[jward]

You touched on one of my pet peeves with the modern hobby. You have these finely detailed models retailing for top dollar, but they simply don't hold up under regular usage. Why pay extra for all those fine details when they will simply break off if you use the car? I'm all about upgrades that improve the operating characteristics of the cars. Thus I am a fan of the Bachmann silver series. They hold up well under the rigors of my railroad, and cost only a little more than the necessary upgrades to an older, cheaper car. They run well right out of the box.

Before the advent of cars like these, the best running cars were the Athearn and Roundhouse ones that already came with RP25 wheels and Body mounted couplers. The only upgrades I needed to do were adding Kadee couplers, which dropped right into the coupler boxes, and adding a little weight.


For train set cars of that era (1960s to mid 1990s) I needed to do the following:
1.Replace the truck mounted couplers with body mounted ones.
2.Replace the horn hook couplers with Kadees.
3.Replace, at a minimum, the old wheelsets that had pizza cutter flanges with ones that met the RP25 profile. Usually this included new metal wheels, but not always. The wheel profile is far more important than what it is made of.
4.Ream the truck journals with a truck tuning tool so that the new wheelsets rolled far better than the originals ever did. If this was not possible, the trucks would get replaced.
5. Once the trucks and wheelsets were satisfactory, coupler height would be adjusted to meet the Kadee coupler height guage, and the trip pins adjusted.
6.Add enough weight to bring them up to at least NMRA specs. To be honest, I prefer mine slightly overweight.

Usually secondary improvements like repainting or replacement of missing details like foot stirrups would occur while the cars were out of service for primary upgrades.

WIth the Silver Series cars, and similar ones by Athearn or Atlas, such upgrades are unnecessary. The only upgrade I now do is to replace the plastic knuckle couplers with Kadees as they fail.

[trainman203]

I'm pretty careful with my detailed cars but I do still have a bunch of less fragile cars I keep because of some road name I can't get otherwise.

I agree with you about the fragility issue.  I still have a carrying case full of cars just like you described that are meant to travel to clubs. However, the last club layout within a reasonable distance closed down recently, thrown out in a property disagreement deal.  I will keep the case of cars for the time being, but they may leave the property at some point.

Like I said earlier.  Finely detailed premium level cars are not for everyone. Maybe not even for me anymore. I've gotten to the age where it's hard to see that detail at all.