Converting Lionel Rotary Bathtub Gons to 2 Rail

I wonder if the new Kadee trucks would work?

kadee trucks will work. However, I still have the kadee coupler mounting issue.

Can you post a picture?

@Chris Thomas posted:

kadee trucks will work. However, I still have the kadee coupler mounting issue.

What is the issue? We need more information.

Seems something would need to be fabricated to mount kadees.

I’m not really familiar with these cars. Whatever your going to use for trucks. I would get them mounted up first at whatever ride height looks somewhat correct. Then I would roll it up to the Kadee height gauge and see where your at as to what you need as far as a shim that would also act as the mount. I’m old school and would probably make a U shaped bracket using metal that would wrap around the truck mount and make use of the 2 screws which I’m guessing mount the body. You probably will need longer screws and something to make up the offset.
Once in place. I would center and mount the Kadee. Drilling and tapping the holes. Then trace everything out and trim it up close to the Kadee.

I like aluminum but if it involves a lot of cutting . Cutting brass can be done with a Dremel. You can also use styrene and possibly just glue it if your comfortable with it holding. If you have multiples to do. Once you come up with a plan. Look into getting them 3D printed.

Not to put him on the spot, but @AlanRail might be able to make 3D printed mounts. I would definitely be interested as well. 

I dont have a lot of 2-rail cars. The Kadee mounts that I do have may not fit these.

I would need dimensions in decimal inches (use a digital caliper) of the mount with holes located and sized for the Kadee and to mount the 3D piece to the car and for the trucks you are using.

There's 2 issues with these.  

First, the trucks are mounted too far inboard as compared to the real one, so what you actually need to do is just remove the lionel protrusion and move the truck outboard on a new bolster that you'll need to make and glue to the car.

Second, one end of the car has nothing to mount a kadee to. This can be fixed by adding some plastic and paint matching it.  

I've sent the thread to a friend of mine who has been working on converting both MTH and Lionel cars to kadees. Hopefully he chimes in with the exact surgical procedure, but its not a simple job.

Photos helped!

No real car bolster there and correcting that as well as added a landing pad at both ends for mounting the Kadee on to is something that could be done fairly straightforward in styrene. Do need to know where that car bolster really should be situated. Have to also make sure the trucks clear those clunky steps (replace those?).  Also do need to know proper car height once the trucks are on new bolsters to get that correct prior to figuring out height up/down of the couplers.  So a few unknowns to extract before moving forward.

I use Jeff Shon's  how to as the basis.

https://ogrforum.com/topic/tak...ter-to-another-level

I simply mill the truck bolster off of the car even with the transverse end the bottom of the car.

The magic number for the truck center is 1.24" from the outside of the center vertical member on the outside of the car. I gue a Kadee pad into the end of the car.  The piece showing is 0.040", in the open area above it is a piece of 0.060" to add some material for the screw to hold onto.

Both of these are MTH but the gray car is stock, the Conrail has been modified. When the truck is moved, the center of the truck should be under the center of the first rib.

Steve

@Chris Thomas posted:

Has anyone had success converted the Lionel Rotary Bathtub Gons to 2 rail using atlas 100 ton roller bearing trucks and can tell me how you did it?

Thanks

Chris

The elephant in the room is that the rotary coupler is mounted on the truck instead of on the body. I'm thinking that mounting a Kadee in a piece of tubing and mounting that within a tube mounted to the car would allow it to rotate, but there is some additional engineering to get everything aligned properly.

How many of y'all actually use the rotary coupler? It's a neat feature but I don't have a rotary dump.