Picked up a couple of Weaver troop sleeper cars and they are 2 Rail (have to read the boxes closer or keep my glasses cleaner!) What is involved in converting to 3 rail trucks with pickups and they came with scale couplers All help info appreciated. Thanks Tom Weaver
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Tom, You may want to search this Forum for information about zinc pest/rot. Some floors were made with an off specification alloy and expanded to the extent that the bottom of the sides of the cars were cracked. Others had side frames of the trucks crumble. Replacement floors may be available. Do you want to maintain the interior lighting and the scale couplers? John in Lansing, ILL
In my experience the most cost effective way is to find new atlas 3 rail troop car and switch the shells. assuming your floors will need replaced and i can day of about 30 weaver troop cars i’ve got a handful the floors haven’t been replaced on. As another member mentioned the weaver trucks also tend to pretty much disintegrate. So if your look for an easy reliable fix. pickup any old atlas troop car at a show and switch the shells. Can find some odd name roads for usually around 50 bucks.
Thanks for info I was able to secure the replacement frames to change out! Will do that as precaution. Maybe I can find Atlas trucks for replacement I haven't been able to come up with an atlas # for current troop car trucks!
As a note in history: The local paper "Today in History" 75 years ago the canteen in Sayre canteen served its 500,000th meal to service personnel. Our family had a good friend that was a volunteer in the canteen.
rattler21 posted:Tom, You may want to search this Forum for information about zinc pest/rot. Some floors were made with an off specification alloy and expanded to the extent that the bottom of the sides of the cars were cracked. Others had side frames of the trucks crumble. Replacement floors may be available. Do you want to maintain the interior lighting and the scale couplers? John in Lansing, ILL
John, I do want to keep lighting but the "scale" couplers will go! fortunately the pest hasn't hit yet!
I have not been able to get to Atlas to see if they if they offer the new trucks!
"Maybe I can find Atlas trucks for replacement I haven't been able to come up with an atlas # for current troop car trucks!"
Tom, I have the newer Atlas version of the troop car in 3-rail. I've included a few pics, maybe they'll help.
Do the Atlas trucks roll better than the Weaver trucks? I’ve got 5 of the troop cars in storage I will need to inspect. The Weaver trucks rolled like sleds and the pickup roller arms had a tendency to arc against the axles when going over switches. Hopefully the Atlas trucks were improved.
Ryan, honestly I can't say. I don't have any of the Weaver troop cars to compare with. I would have to believe from the post above about "zinc issues" that the trucks you mentioned had already been compromised. The car in the pics I posted has plastic floors so at least some of the issues have been addressed. This example has no track time (yet) so I have no performance record on those. I would like to get a couple more of the Atlas Troop Cars if I could find a replacement set of trucks in the case that these start to disintegrate.
I unscrewed the floor from the shell in order to prevent it from getting damaged secondary to the floor warping. So far, all metal parts are still in good shape.
Alan
@Rail Dude posted:Ryan, honestly I can't say. I don't have any of the Weaver troop cars to compare with. I would have to believe from the post above about "zinc issues" that the trucks you mentioned had already been compromised. The car in the pics I posted has plastic floors so at least some of the issues have been addressed. This example has no track time (yet) so I have no performance record on those. I would like to get a couple more of the Atlas Troop Cars if I could find a replacement set of trucks in the case that these start to disintegrate.
I purchased my Weaver cars when they were new so zinc pest hadn’t become a thing yet. In looking at the photos of your Atlas cars, they have already made improvements over the original Weaver trucks. The pickup roller assy is completely different as is the coupler assy. The roller arm arcing problem would have been addressed with this new design.
Well that's good news at each point. Now all we need is a good Part Number from Atlas for the 3-rail trucks they're now using.
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