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Years ago, pre-OGR Forum, a 2-rail modeler (Dave B) converted an MTH Burlington Northern center beam flat car to 2-rail. I always remembered that project as I had the identical car (don't even remember where/when I got it). Anyway, I stumbled across some nice lumber loads and decided that they'd be good for this car. Well, looking at the car, I realized that the old-style truck placement and excessive ride height weren't going to cut it. So I started cutting. I removed the ends from the chassis plate and cut out sections of the center sill to allow clearance for the new trucks (Weaver Roller Bearing with 33-inch Intermountain wheels. I made bolsters from strip wood. The contact cement is setting up so I'll drill the truck mounting holes tomorrow. Because of the added weight of the load, I removed the chassis weight. If this works out, I'll use the same technique on several MTH Autoracks I have.

2015-09-20 21.28.03 

 

The next step will be to figure out the correct height for the Kadees. Meanwhile, here are a couple of options I'm looking at for setting up the lumber loads. I'm leaning toward the second option, but I've seen them loaded all three ways.

 

2015-08-20 20.53.27

2015-08-20 20.52.29

2015-08-20 20.50.08

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Last edited by AGHRMatt
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Well, I got the wheels on it and it rides about where I wanted it to.

 

Notching out the end sills for the Kadees is going to be fun. Made the side cuts with a razor saw (no problem. Now cutting across is going to take a ton of passes with an X-Acto knife. Hopefully I'll get it done by tomorrow. I like this project so much I'm going to do another C-B flat that I found in my store room.

 

2015-09-21 22.09.05

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  • 2015-09-21 22.09.05
Will follow this with interest, as I have one as well. I just replaced the trucks with MTH 2-rail ones; Kadees are then at the right height as it comes, but it does look a bit too high, & the underframe is wildly inaccurate. Lowering will help.
Any thoughts on the width of this car? To me it looks a bit narrow - apparently true of many 3-rail cars. Not that I could correct it - that would seem to require so much surgery you might as well scratchbuild an accurate one instead!!
Any underside views of the new kadee fittings?

The couplers are mounted straight to the floor (with shims) on this one as it wasn't set up for scale couplers. I drilled 1/16" holes and used 1-72 machine screws to hold them in place. The end beams were also solid so I had to notch them for Kadees. Cuts were made with a razor saw up to the bottom of the floor, then a few dozen passes with an X-Acto knife until I could snap out the section. As you can see from photo, I sectioned out the under-frame (see first photo above) so I could install fabricated bolsters (3/8" thick) for Weaver couplers. They only need to be about 1/4" or so for Atlas trucks (which I'm going to use on the Auto Racks.

 

The width on the car seems about right as 4-foot wide lumber stacks fit perfectly, leaving space to install strapping (which I plan to put in on this car). The height of the original car was way off and this one is slightly high to allow the trucks to swing on model railroad curves. I suspect the newer cars (with the right truck location) ride high for that reason also. (Oh, if only we had the space for prototypical curves). I don't have one of the newer Center Beam cars, but my newer MTH Auto Racks (with the trucks in the right place) still had solid end beams so my suspicion is that even with scale MTH trucks, they'll ride about 1/8" too high.

 

I tested the car last night at the club and it cleared a 36" radius (O-72) curve without incident while coupled to a 50-foot car with shock-control couplers. Some prototype photos I've been studying show the cars with long-shank couplers which I think I'll eventually install to allow coupling to shorter cars.

Well, I got the loads glued to each other and glued into the car. It weighs in at 30 ounces -- five ounces overweight per NMRA, but there's really no clean way to model the loaded car. Dropped by a fabric store and picked up some moderately heavy black thread to represent cabling and will hopefully get the pinholes drilled in so I can finish it off. I decided not to weather the car at this time, but it won't be difficult to remove the load if I decide to weather it later.

 

I'd like to give a shout-out to Dave B for the inspiration for this conversion. He gave me some additional info and photos of the mods he did on his car.

 

 

2015-10-05 22.14.06

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