Atlas Premier 50' Gunderson Boxcar - Conversion from 3R to 2R

Mike, good work!

Dan Weinhold

So I modified the new Atlas 3R Merry Christmas boxcar for 2R operation.  Seen here after the conversion to 2R.  I will install a constant brightness circuit or a DCC decoder and remove the slide on/off switch.   I used Atlas Caboose truck pickups on Atlas 100 Ton Roller Bearing trucks with some modification.    Thinking I will also reroute the bundle of wiring in front of the tree to clean that up.

Anyone else tackle conversion of these cars to 2R?   If so, how did you do it?

I received a couple private emails asking how I modified the Atlas 100-Ton truck using the pickups from the Atlas caboose truck.    I'll do a write up when I modify the green boxcar, which is up next.   Basically it's removing the bottom portion of the plastic retainer from the caboose truck, a couple quick modifications to it to better fit on the Atlas 100-Ton truck, glue it and put the copper pickups back on the plastic retainer.  Mount as normal.

I chose to solder the wires onto the copper strips as depicted in the photo below.

Very nice Mike! I really like the air hoses you installed, just curious where you got those- the conversion looks awesome!

@Jeff78rr posted:

Very nice Mike! I really like the air hoses you installed, just curious where you got those- the conversion looks awesome!

Jeff, I use the Hi-Tech Details

Hi-Tech Details Catalog

As I was working on the green car, see photos at the bottom of the post.  I wanted to capture some of the process I use for adding the wipers from the Atlas caboose trucks to the Atlas 100-Ton trucks.

This first photo shows a completed Atlas 100-Ton truck and the wiper section off an Atlas Caboose truck.  To remove the wiper section off the Atlas caboose truck you remove the 4 small screws holding the two copper wipers onto the plastic part.  Next you remove the 2 larger screws holding the plastic part onto the bottom of the Atlas caboose truck bolster. From there you can use a flat blade screw driver and pry the plastic part from the Atlas caboose truck.

From there you need remove some of the plastic pieces from the part.  See photo below

It will look like this once you have removed the necessary portions from the plastic part.  This has been lightly sanded to smooth out the mounting surface.   

Next, you'll need to glue the modified plastic part onto the underside of the Atlas 100-Ton truck bolster, making sure you center the hole over the truck mounting hole and the rough side of the plastic part is towards the bottom of the atlas truck bolster.   I use a strong gel adhesive which gives me some time to adjust/align as needed.  Gorilla has a glue like this... Anyway, once the plastic part sets, reattach the copper wipers using the 4 small screws and ensure the contacts are aligned on the back size of the wheels.   That all there is to it.  Like I showed in the previous post you can solder left and right rail pickups directly to the copper wipers.

Mike, thanks for the detailed write up! Those cars are awesome!  I’m going to order some of those hoses for sure, very cool!

So moving forward with finishing the cars, got me thinking about adding sound, so they are back a part and I'll be adding a loksound FX decoder to them with prerecorded holiday favorites which randomly play, may require function buttons to be on, will see how annoying it gets with just using the random functions.

A light weathering will be applied and a final clear coat once I button these back up.

Mike, great looking car!

Dan Weinhold