Milw Road Superdome Truck Conversion

I believe the floors are mostly flat steel.  I use a piece of strip wood, with cutouts where the flat floor has depressions, bolted with machine screws to the floor.  Then I attach whatever trucks I want with wood screws.  

K-Line cars were all made for 3-Rail. A previous owner had to convert your cars. I inadvertently purchased a K-Line 2-Rail car and used the trucks from another K-Line passenger car to have the change made.

Marty Fitzhenry did this conversion for me and the car looks absolutely correct in every respect now. You might want to contact him if you have any questions.

PTC: He is talking about changing the trucks from the supplied 4-wheel (2-axle) to 6-wheel (3 axle), which is prototypical for that car. All the trucks involved are 3-rail. 

Here's what they should look like. Don

Gentlemen:

Thanks for your input.

I'm not rushing into this.  If I can make the conversion, I want it right.  If I can't make it so it looks like factory or better, then I'll just have to live with the "Lionel - K-Line" engineering error.

Only a few of us will know.  I won't tell if you won't.

I've attached photo of my Superdome for those who have never seen one before.

Here's another...

cick for larger image and additional photos

I would like to change the trucks on my MR Superdome car to three axles too.I added vinyl stripes between the dome window struts to make it look a little more realistic.

Dan

Would these work:

http://www.lionel.com/products...neID=&CatalogId=

Here is my MR Superdome on a 261 steam engine excursion run around my living room.

Dan

I have considered doing the conversion also, and I have done a bit of investigation of what trucks would fit and how to do the job. Paul Fischer (Fisch330), who as far as I know is the only one ever to successfully do the conversion, used trucks from the MTH Premier dome cars. He had to widen the openings in the body with a Dremel tool, but he stated that it was a fairly straightforward swap. Two key factors are the location of the pivot point and the length of the coupler shank. I investigated using K-Line heavyweight trucks for the conversion, but I discovered that the pivot point and coupler shank were wrong for the dome cars and it would be all but impossible to use those trucks. I've also discovered that there are several different models of MTH six-wheel trucks and not all of them will work either. So far the only trucks I've found that look like they will work are the ones Paul used, the ones taken off Premier super dome cars. I've got one pair of those plus a couple of cars I can cannibalize. I'm planning to try one conversion whenever I get time. I did not check the Lionel heavyweight trucks for fit; at the time they were not available and in any case they don't resemble the prototype trucks as much as the MTH trucks do. 

Installing the MTH trucks solved the issue for me.  You asked about what conversions were necessary and what I remember is that I had to grind out the skirting around the truck area in order to make space for the six wheel truck.  Wasn't much of a problem.  Also, the king pin on the trucks allowed for mounting with the offset toward one end of the truck or the other.  I elected to have the offset end toward the middle of the car, so as to make the car body ride away from the outside of the curve.  this worked out best for curves, tunnels and clearance along side the car. 

I also changed the seats in the dome to have all the seats face in one direction which I called "forward".  After changing the color of the upholstery from that ivory plastic color to a deep red, the car looked much better.

Paul Fischer

Southwest Hiawatha

The big hang up in the change out will be the "K-Line" mounting plate that's used.

It has a raised boss with a punchout for the truck pin.

I have the MTH Premier 3 axle trucks.  When placed side by side with the knuckles aligned, there is about a 9mm difference in the alignment of the center pins.

At present, my thinking is a new mounting plate would have to be fabricated that had the mounting hole for the MTH truck moved forward 9mm  and enlarged to accept the MTH boss.

The next hurdle would be the height of the boss, since the MTH and K-Line "pin" heights aren't the same.  If that isn't taken into consideration, then the roof lines won't line up like the do now.

K-Line uses a washer below the mounting plate for the truck to swivel on. The MTH truck as a real shallow mount boss so that distance would have to be made up with the mounting plate itself.

Think about it and get back to me.

Again, thanks for your input.

Rmrod:

Sounds like you may have a different MTH truck than what I have. It's been a long time since I inspected the K-Line car and the MTH trucks, but there wasn't anything like a 9mm difference in the coupler alignment. There are several different MTH 6-wheel trucks. If I can find one in the mess on my workbench, I can post a photo of the one I plan to use, which is identical to the ones Paul used for his conversion. 

Paul

Could you post a picture of this?

Thanks 

Bob

Bob:  I'm going to try to add a couple of photos that I have just taken of the Milw K-Line Superdome.  My train is made up of all 21" cars but I'm sure that the same conversion would work on 18" cars. 

I measured the openings for truck swing on the skirting of the cars and found that the standard opening is about 3 1/2".  The widened opening for the six wheel MTH trucks is only about 3/8" longer.

Regarding the re location of the some car seats, just getting the car open and removing the upper floor was a project.  I had done this about 3 or 4 years ago and don't remember it complely.  I know that I had to cut some holes for the lights when the one set of seats were reversed.  It would have been nice to have lights under the center of the roof but that's not how the K-Line cars were made.  So I just elected to keep the "tube lights" in their place rather than try to re-engineer the whole car.

The photos show the complete car, close up of the interior and the mounting of the MTH trucks.

Incidentally, K-Line made the wrong interior for the Skytop Lounges.  As they came from the factory they had Pullman compartments in the area where parlor car seats should have been.  The Milwaukee Road had two types of Skytops, a one built by the Milwaukee itself, which were parlor cars, and the other by Pullman, which were sleeping cars.  The exteriors of the cars were also very different but Maury Klein didn't know the difference.  So he supplied pullman compartment interiors in a parlor car body. 

I rebuilt the interior, using rotating parlor car seats and eliminated the compartments.  I have a couple of photos here to show that car as well.

Paul

Thanks for the pictures.  Very nice work.   The painted seats look so much better than the mass of glowing ivory as delivered from K-Line.  I have 2 domes and a skytop to add to my project list.

Bob

Paul

Where did you get the seats for the interior conversion?

SouWest Hi, Bob:  I believe that they were from Precision Scale in Montana.  I've used their interiors for other projects as well.  They make them in various colors of plastic and in various seating configurations.  You're talking about the Skytop, right?  The interiors or the Superdome are all the original seats, just repainted and relocated.  I had a photo of one of the Superdome interiors and it showed the seats to be a reddish, almost maroon color.  That color you see is as close as I could find on my spray paint shelf.

Speaking of Precision Scale, I also used their seats in some Weaver smooth side, 1934 Milwaukee Road built cars.  When Weaver did them, being on a limited budget, they simply used the interiors from their Pullman-Bradley cars.  I had always wanted a train made up of those cars and felt that I'd never have another chance to own a set, so, in spite of their shortcomings, I bought the train, some seven cars worth.  This has always been my favorite passenger train and is the train that Lionel should have made in 1935 when they came out with their original Hi but with the articulated, M10,000 cars.  So I bought them and started upgrading the interiors as well as adding detail to the undersides of the cars.  Also put an interior in the Tip Top Tap car.  Unfortunately the windows on the Weaver cars appear to be a bit low, in spite of the fact that they look pretty correct.  So I had to lower the floors a bit and even then the seats were too high for the window openings.  So I had to maually cut some of the seat pedestals off.  A lot of work and no one that visits the layout even notices,  except me!  And that makes all the work worthwhile.

I'm also working on a ten car train of the 1938 built rib sided cars from Weaver.  But these cars were from the early 1990's and were built before it became standard to include interiors.  These trains had more variety of car configuration than the 1934 series, so a lot of research has been necessary.  As of yet, I only have two of the ten cars so modified.

For people (My trains are always full:  My railroad makes money!) I've been using the 1930's 1940's seated people from 3rd Rail.  These people look appropriate for all these trains.  The men are all wearing suits and ties, some have hats and the women are all wearing skirts or suits and most are wearing hats.  That's the right way to travel;  none of these jeans, cut offs and other sloppy dressers you see today.

Paul Fischer

Paul

Thanks for the detailed reply, that's useful information. You mention the tinplate train Lionel "should have made" instead of the Hiawatha pulling a repainted M10000 articulated train. You probably know this, but Pride Lines made that train in tinplate - I have one. It looks great but unfortunately, like most everything Pride Lines made, it is mechanically awful. I replaced almost every moving part, including the motor, with Lionel and MTH parts and now it runs like it looks. Here's a picture, together with the 1988 remake of the 1935 Lionel set. Click on the picture for a better view.

Very nice work guys on your cars.

How true Paul

"For people (My trains are always full:  My railroad makes money!) I've been using the 1930's 1940's seated people from 3rd Rail.  These people look appropriate for all these trains.  The men are all wearing suits and ties, some have hats and the women are all wearing skirts or suits and most are wearing hats.  That's the right way to travel;  none of these jeans, cut offs and other sloppy dressers you see today.

Paul Fischer"