Advice on two-railing a Lionel 2-Bay D&TS Hopper

Not familiar with the car. Do you have a product number ? A picture of the underside might give some ideas as to how to do it and what your dealing with. I remember years ago the Standard O line of cars had trucks with an offset mount. But that was 40 years ago.  I convert everything to 3RS and usually come up with a solution to get things to work. You can use your Atlas side frames and make new center  section and drill an offset mount if it comes to that.  I did that to squeeze Lionel milk car trucks on some brass cars. The other issue is mounting the Kadee if mounts aren’t provided. Some pics would be helpful unless someone else has already done one.

Definitely some pics of what you’re trying to accomplish would be the most beneficial…..like Dave said, where there’s a will, there’s a way,…..unscrew one of the trucks and get a few pics of all the players involved for the best remedy……

Pat

not familiar with the car  nor the trucks but it could be as simple as just replacing the wheelset with scale.  Or fabricating a little offset piece  to fit on what ever scale trucks you use   ( Pictures would help)

Many thanks guys for taking the trouble to respond. Pictures below:

oops !

These should be the trucks that are on the car. I found them on Lionel’s parts site and they are listed as an offset mount. I’m guessing looking at the car this was done to get a more solid mounting spot. The car must be disassembled to access the truck mount screws. Similar to an MTH.

It looks like the side frames are staked on. Not sure if you can install 2 rail axles. If you can get the trucks removed. You could cobble up a small bracket and make up an offset. With the Atlas trucks. I’m guessing you have the diecast ones. The car may sit to high. The Weaver trucks might work out better if you try doing a a offset bracket.

I’ve modified both Atlas and Lionel trucks using just the side frames for some 2 rail brass to 3 rail conversions. I  did a couple of milk container on flat cars where I used a Lionel truck. The Lionel truck is a longer wheelbase than the prototype. In order to get it under the car better and avoid some details. I created an offset mount. Similar to what you need to create. I’ve done this with the Atlas trucks to. Just use the center piece as a template on some brass or aluminum stock to get the spacing right.

Once you get the car apart. You can what you need to get trucks under it. If you can mock up something that looks like it might work. Get out your height gauge and see where you are as far as mounting a Kadee and what you can attach it to.

Not seeing actual car body bolsters (hard to be 100% sure w/o the truck removed), so maybe just swapping out the wheelsets might be the most expedient route.

Just had a thought. On the Atlas die cast trucks. The mount they use for the 3 rail coupler may just give you the offset you need and it’s already drilled. Providing the ride height is good. It may be an easy project.

Again many thanks gentlemen.

I have 2 railed over a dozen Lionel cars.    Generally on most of them, I was able to  use the existing trucks and truck mounts.    I would remove the trucks and disassemble them.   I had to remove the coupler mounting pads since I  use Kadee Couplers.    I have found that I can use Athearn wheelsets or intermountain metal wheelsets in the existing trucks.    So after removing the coupler tabs, I reassemble the trucks with either Athearn or Intermountain wheelsets.   

Sometimes the wheelsets are a little loose in the journals but I have not had any tracking issues with this.

Another option would be to find wheelsets with longer axles from Northwest Shortline.   They have many options for 2 rail wheelsets.

In either case it can be done without changing the trucks or mounting locations.

It has been more work to body mount kadee couplers than change the wheelsets.