Lionel Scale Ethanol Tank Cars

I don't like to be the 1 that says this, but being realistic and fair to you, the O Scale market is small compared to HO&N Scales. The chances of  Atlas doing the car you asked about is very small. I, and others, want a 2 bay hopper,I think the capacity is 3281,like the Atlas 3bay Trinity hopper as well as a centerbeam lumber car. But the chances of either of these being produced is extremely small,at least in my mind. Getting Atlas to run new roadnames for existing models is like pulling teeth.

To some up,weigh what you aren't&probably won't have in O Scale vs. what is available and imporant to you in HO carefully,before making the scale change. Just my opinion for what it's worth. I been in O Scale for 4 years now and am likely going to have to leave because of what's looking like a change of housing.

Alan Hummel

Too modern a car for my interest, but it should just be a matter of putting new (insulated) wheel sets, or new trucks on the thing. Intermountain sells nice wheels, or Northwest Short Line. Trucks can be had from various sources.  Shouldn't take much more than a screw driver to do the job.

Get yourself some kind of cradle to hold the car while you work on it. There is an outfit by the name of Proses that offers a couple of nice ones.

Simon

Alan, I gotta admit that is a bit of wisdom.  This is an extremely small market, and unlikely to fulfill all desires.

There was a nice kid in the midwest who was converting Lionel scale, and he did good work.  He was at OSW last time I went, but that was a really long time ago.

Curtis1983 posted:

Has anyone had success at converting the Lionel 30,000 gallon ethanol tank cars to 2 rail?

I love the looks of these cars but at the price and difficulty of working on tank cars with the fragile railings I'm scared of trying to work on these. 

Finally I wish someone would do a conversion and sell these on Ebay. 

I recall Mike DeBergh has written on this forum about the conversion. Choose your prototype livery carefully, some of the model liveries do not match the prototype to the point that the actual tank car is of a different design. 

n.

Alan Hummel posted:

I don't like to be the 1 that says this, but being realistic and fair to you, the O Scale market is small compared to HO&N Scales. The chances of  Atlas doing the car you asked about is very small. I, and others, want a 2 bay hopper,I think the capacity is 3281,like the Atlas 3bay Trinity hopper as well as a centerbeam lumber car. But the chances of either of these being produced is extremely small,at least in my mind. Getting Atlas to run new roadnames for existing models is like pulling teeth.

To some up,weigh what you aren't&probably won't have in O Scale vs. what is available and imporant to you in HO carefully,before making the scale change. Just my opinion for what it's worth. I been in O Scale for 4 years now and am likely going to have to leave because of what's looking like a change of housing.

Alan Hummel

I've already left the HO market due to my preference for a larger size of train cars. I got rid of my HO stuff 3 years ago.

O scale brings me closer to the prototype and I enjoy pretending my train is dangerous and can kill you if you get in front of it. HO scale doesn't give me the same thrill. lol

We'll assume that they are scale...

Here the Lionel models with Weaver trucks and custom bolsters done by the late Ed R.

The white tank cars have stock trucks and NWSL wheel sets for Lionel trucks with spinning end caps.

CURTIS1983,

I surely do agree about the size of the trains!! I guess the only other thing to do is, enjoy what you have,(as I'm sure you are),hope the models wanted will come along,and try to make conversions to existing models that come close to what you want. O Scalers I've found,are quite an inventive group.

As Always,

Al Hummel

Mike's post can be found here. 

https://ogrforum.com/...-converted-to-2-rail