2 railing a Lionel ACF 2 bay covered hopper

 I've done a bunch of different cars. I don't remember doing this one. I used to skip Lionel's until I saw Ed Ruetling doing them. I don't see him post much anymore. I bet he'd know.

A little tricky because they're (like most any Lionel) not meant to be disassembled by us hoi poloi, but there are tiny holes to release the respective latch tabs on the plates the trucks ride on using a very small allen key or small diameter handled thrust punch. See photo of bottom, 2 holes catercorner to opposite truck journals. Given the lack of a carbody bolster and my project timetable I used the K-Line 2-rail trucks with their 36' wheels and high truck bolster and shimmed the Kadee box down to compensate. I haven't touched it since, as it's way down on my list.

Replacing the roof walk and ladders would be a big improvement, I have a kit bashed Weaver 4-bay with the PRB grated walks and it's a better model.

I did a "mass" set of 2 rail jobs on some Lionel and K-Line's (and lots of grafitti( for a Conrail Freight I put together for the TCA show a couple of years ago using a Trainman GP-15 and U-23 (our modular club was the token 2 rail lobby layout) I bought this car at local shop's firesale closeout to resell but liked the factory scheme so much I kept it, pretty sure it's no good for this type car, but still.....

Hope this helps, agree these are great car bodies.

Pete

     Thanks Pete for the info and for posting the pictures. I probably would have 

   broken something trying to figure out how to get them apart. Your car looks

   great with just adding trucks and couplers. I'm thinking it's worth picking one

   up. 

           Geoff

ATLPETE, been hoping that either Atlas ot MTH would do those 2 bay cement  hoppers justice with a nicely detailed car. I see many small 2 tower tank and gravity fed unloading facilities around town using them. Each has about 3 or 4- 2 bay hoppers alongside them. nice siding facility.

Wish Atlas do a nice metal walks,stirups,  and ladders Alum. car.  

Phil

Agree Phil, I see blocks of 6 plus cars of these locally on CSX eastbounds in a mix of "kitty" and the plain blue block letters schemes both in that odd mustard color.
They look great!

I have to think Lionel's is a factory reverse engineered version of the Weaver with the four center chute sections removed, sort of the opposite of the Atlas six chute PS-3(?) CH. Seems they're good at that kind of improvisation with injection molds over there.

Candidly though I'm done buying more of PRC cars unless they're fire sale. Got plenty already and should stick to kits now.   

No, Not the Lionel version! It is hard enough just to upgrade to better 3-Rail Trucks.

MTH Premier O Scale ACF Center Flow 2-bay covered hoppers are the ones that can be converted to 2-Rail.

Andrew

The D&TS Scheme was close to accurate, there were a few subtle distortions in the markings.

The real ACF Center Flow was almost identical, but the top of the ends were truncated so that the cubic foot capacity was only 2700 cu. ft. capy. They could make a more perfectly accurate hopper body, but it was a version specific to D&TS, B&O Chessie, C&O Chessie. The manufacturer would have to produce every single road number over a decade to make the production of these exact ACF Center Flow hoppers as big as production of a few numbers for 20 railroads.

Andrew

Andrew, thanks for the info. I fell much better about keeping this car as I don't get caught up with the finer variances between the factory runs and the intended prototypes as I used to, my bad, also think it's good for Geoff that there's a better alternative to the Lionel; it is indeed not a "user friendly" conversion. I'm impressed you get the distinctions in the carbody version based on the capacity variations.

Well done.

MTH Premier O Scale ACF Center Flow 2-bay covered hoppers are the ones that can be converted to 2-Rail.

I have to agree with Andrew on that.  While the earlier versions of the MTH ACF 2 bay covered hopper were only intended for three rail operation MTH now advertises that they have:

https://ogrforum.com/t...-ton-covered-hoppers