UP 66' GREENBRIER GONDOLA-LIONEL- 2 RAILED- PART 2

Very accurate work! it's like real! 

jpv in France

Hi John.

HIBAR.

Great work mate and a really nice car but alas, to long for me to many sharp curves but you never know maybe one day I might get one just to admire sitting in the yard.....on straight track ! Ha Ha . Roo.

Really great work John!

Roo posted:

Hi John.

HIBAR.

Great work mate and a really nice car but alas, to long for me to many sharp curves but you never know maybe one day I might get one just to admire sitting in the yard.....on straight track ! Ha Ha . Roo.

Hi Roo, what radius do you define as "sharp curves"? I have Atlas bulkhead flat cars (62ft?) that take 3ft radius easily, as does my Atlas Berwick HiCube. In fact I have one curve that tightens down to about 26inch radius, & they take that, too!!

One of my MTH Centrebeams (70ft + ?) also takes that curve; the 'inaccurate' one with trucks at the ends. The other, with trucks in the correct locations, can't just yet, as the inner wheelsets foul the inner chassis locating screws, but with a bit if work should be ok. 

My Atlas SD40 can take the 26in curve, but will derail any stock it hauls due to pilot overhang, but I was expecting that anyway. 

So even with such a flange-squeeler of a curve, I would be quietly confident of running this Lionel car on my layout. Only finances (or the lack of...!!) prevents me getting one at the moment.

It would be useful if Lionel would go the whole hog and set up a brand for their scale stuff - 'Dark Side'?  They've surprised me with nice drop-end gons, flats and a b-w caboose, lots I haven't seen up close yet.  Oh, and a box of 89' Auto Racks .. .  Kadees, IM wheels for 2-rail and they'll run round sharp curves OK, switching maybe trickier....  Want an autorack Jordan, got 'em when the Pound was stronger, theyre huge!

Jason

jdunn posted:

Photos attached of Lionel UP 66' GREENBRIER GONDOLA 2 Railed and weathered.

Thanks to Walter Maier (HIBAR) for verifying UP ownership of these Gondolas.

Lionel even used same number as photo in RR Pictures Archives . NET

Enjoy!!! Thanks Lionel for moving one step closer to the Dark Side. John

Nice gon you have there John , UP and CSX , the scrap gon "Sturgis Scrap Metal" is that a converted bulkhead flat ?

Dear Bernie,

I purchased that Sturgis gondola from you !!! You are the man scratch building the modern rolling stock that will be never produced on a large scale- with the exception of the Lionel 86' auto boxcars !!!

Someone also asked where my steel loads came from.

A fellow named Dick Y. attends the RPM meet in Malvern Pa. and he primarily models in HO /N and he built me many different steel loads.

I hope these photos motivate some of you to try your hand at weathering 2 or 3 rail.

Thanks, John 

Sorry John I thought that HIBAR owned that gondola great job mate looks good.

Got to go see you in three weeks time out walking in the bush, no computers. Roo.

Excellent effort John! I have a "thing" for gondolas although the ones I have are shorter than the beauty you have there.

Bob

Looks good!  I just started on my UP, and CSX cars the other night.    Glued the coupler pads on, and installed Precision Scale plastic air hoses on the ends.  Did a test with Atlas 100 ton trucks, very nice looking car.   Underframe brake detail could be better, i.e., separately applied brake rigging, but still okay!     Of the new roads planned, which ones are correct?   I know the BNSF "swoosh logo" car is okay, but what about the others?    Thanks!

These cars are truly a bargain at the $58 street price, no doubt about it. A lot of detail for the track side vision, just an awesome car.  

Jeff,

Agreed!  Definitely a great car!

I completed my Lionel 3-Rail to 2-Rail conversion using a different method than changing out the wheelsets. The reason for this method is I have several pairs of American Scale Models 100T Roller Bearing brass trucks that I wanted to use and these cars seemed like a good candidate.  Little did I know how much work it was going to be but it was a fun project that kept me out of trouble .

I quickly realized that I had to overcome several issues. The first issue that I had to resolve was with these ASM trucks (and this would apply to pretty much every application of these trucks on any piece of rolling stock) is that these ASM trucks have a threaded bolster hole and come with a nice shoulder screw and coil spring. The issue is that this threaded bolster design pretty much requires the screw head to be on the inside of the rolling stock (akin to how MTH mounts their trucks) rather than the more conventional method of passing the screw through a hole in the truck and then threading it into the bolster on rolling stock. Obviously, could not mount the trucks with the truck mounting screw on the inside of this piece of rolling stock, maybe this truck mounting method would be more useful on something like a boxcar where you can easily hide the screw on the inside of the car. In addition, I wanted to reuse the ASM-provided shoulder screw and spring so that meant some modification of the truck was in order. The first item was to drill out the threaded hole to allow the shoulder to pass through it freely.

The next issue I encountered was with the screw itself, the head on the screw was too large to seat down in between the casting webs on the truck bolster so the head needed to be turned down a bit. A small collet chuck made short work of that

The next task was to address the bolster on the car itself. The existing Lionel truck mounting bolster needed to be completely redesigned for mounting these ASM trucks. For this I had to come up with a design that would handle the 3 MM shouldered screw and maintains the proper car height. I made a plastic prototype to test for coupler height and adequate truck clearance and came up with the following design, which I then modeled in 3D CAD so I could machine the part out of some brass bar stock.

One modification that I had to do to the existing Lionel bolster arrangement was to remove the existing plastic truck mounting boss from between the two bolster webs on bottom of car. I removed this center plastic truck mounting boss with an Xacto knife with a chisel style blade installed.

Next, I did the CAM for generating the G-code to CNC machine the part and used my CNC mill (only fitting that I used a mill on a mill gondola ) to machine up a new bolster out of brass bar stock.

I then painted it up and installed it on the gondola with some CA

I then mounted the trucks and put it into revenue service.

 Now I just need to whip out a few more for the remaining gondolas that I have and think up of some cool loads to put in them.

Scott Kay

Austin, TX

Scott, great job! Thanks for the writeup.

Dan Weinhold

Scott, Definitely a lot of work, but the car really turned out awesome!  Thanks for sharing!

great work.

Dick

surely a lot of work. the result speaks for itself. very nice.

What is the built date on those cars?

Does the prototype car run on Barber S2's which I believe are the ones Bill Davis imports or does the prototype run on ASF's (ride control) which to the best of my knowledge have not been done in brass. 

n.

Texas Eagle 77 posted:

What is the built date on those cars?

The SP cars have a built date in 1996.  These SP cars are supposed to represent the Thrall-built cars that SP ordered that year; however, this model is a closer representation to Greenville-built cars than the Thrall-built cars.  I can't speak for the built date on the other road names.

Scott

Scott, wow!!  No wonder it looked so "right" when I saw it run in person last week.  Methinks you have yet another potential product for O scalers.  The bolster.  

I have pics of BNSF Gunderson cars with a build date of 2005 on them, if I recall correctly.  I'll post if I can find them on my computer - always a challenge.  I probably have shots indicating the trucks as well.

Jim

Bill Davis also is making the A-3 ride control truck

Well I didn't recall correctly.  The build date on the Gunderson cars is 10-2013.  I think the 2005 figure is when BNSF went to the swoosh logo.

I don't have a totally clear picture of the truck sideframes.  They are tucked up under the side of the car, and the jacking pad is also right in the way of the center of the truck.  It looks like a fairly common ASF Barber S-2-**-** variant.

I finished my 3 cars the Saturday before Christmas.   Absolutely beautiful cars!    For the next run of these cars, I have decided on the BNSF (swoosh), and the AOK cars.   From what I've seen of the Rail Gon, and the ATW cars, these are not the Greenbreier cars, and have the straight side sills unlike the Lionel model.   I have personally seen the BNSF, and the AOK Greenbreier 66 foot cars at the Arcelor Mittal Burns Harbor, Ind. plant in the past two weeks, and they match the Lionel car exactly!