Fun At The Swap Meet

I've always liked model railroad swap meets. Sometimes I find "classic" models from the 1940s and 50s, like Athearn metal or Varney, which I try to make operable on my layout; other times I find more recent (but still gone from stores) models that are also fun to upgrade.

Last weekend I hit the Simi Valley Model Railroad Club swap meet, where I can almost always find something well worth the trip. This included an Accurail Seaboard System ACF Centerflow:

This was in good condition (no missing parts, no broken steps), with metal wheels and Kadees added by the prior owner. (I suspect this was from an estate; I respect the guy for how he took care of the car.) However, there were several things I had to do to bring it up to my own standards. First, it was an early Accurail, with coupler pocket covers held in with press-fit pins. I removed these, shaved off the pins, and drilled out the covers to clear 2-56 screws. This allows coupler adjustment, maintenance, and easy replacement in the future, should this be necessary.

There's a gotcha with some Accurails, too: their roller bearing trucks are a 70-ton prototype, while cars like ACF Centerflows had 100 ton trucks. The good part about this is that many Walthers cars (now in their Mainline brand, but many earlier kits) have prototypes with 70 ton trucks, but Walthers provides 100 ton trucks. So the easiest fix is simply to swap the roller bearing trucks from Walthers (and Athearn bluebox or RTR) cars with the roller bearing trucks from Accurail. The 100 ton trucks also need 36 inch wheels, but since the older cars from swaps have plastic wheels anyhow, you simply replace the plastic wheels with 36 inch metal ones.

Finally, I paint the wheels and couplers with some shade of rust (or the former, much missed, Floquil Rail Brown). Here's the result on SBD 247108:

To my eye, the different trucks and painted wheels are important changes. The 70-ton trucks from the Accurail car went onto this Walthers kit-built FGE car from the 1990s. (They are now issued as Mainline cars in RTR, but the truck issue is still there):

Both these cars still need COTS stencils and weathering.

Here's another covered hopper, a late Roundhouse, that I found at the Simi Valley swap a few years ago:

I had a really hard time finding prototype photos of this car. I finally saw one on a DVD video of the Katy. The prior owner did the very light weathering; I did little more than clean it up and add the ACI label. This car was interchanged onto Ralph V's Kings Port & Western as part of an interchange project on the now-defunct Whistle Post forum. Here it is on Ralph's layout: