Aristo-Craft's 40 foot Double Door Box Cars - Another production run

Aristo-Craft's 40 foot Double Door Box Cars - Another production run

I recently acquired four new Aristo double door (DD) box cars - two in Southern Pacific, one Milwaukee Road and one Southern RR. As is commonplace for Aristo the cars came with factory installed plastic wheels, so I retrofitted them with metal wheels.

The following pictures show these new cars with retrofitted metal wheels:

Two road numbers are offered so I got two SP cars as this is my core railroad of interest

The Southern RR car is shown below

The Milwaukee Road car is shown below


Most welcomed, Aristo have addressed concerns from earlier production runs of these DD box car products - yet some factory assembly issues remain of interest:

Thankfully, it appears Aristo resumed their past conventional packaging of rolling stock - a good thing since the recent all plastic box was awkward to work with - particularly when trying to put back the goods in it. (I had cut myself a couple of times on the sharp edges of those all plastic boxes.) Shown below is the conventional packaging these cars now come in.


As shown below, and much appreciated, Aristo appears to have re-corrected the floor installation orientation whereby the large air tank is nearest the NON brake wheel end of the car as it should be. (The last production run DD MKT car had reverted to the incorrect installation practice.)


However, the Aristo factory needs some direction for the proper installation of the floor assembly as all four of the cars I received had one or more gaps between the side walls of the car and the surrounding edges of the floor. See below picture.

This was corrected by backing out the long screws near these areas (along with the end bulkhead screw) and holding in the car sides against the floor whilst putting upward force against the floor from within the car until the sides popped into a flush position. Then LIGHTLY tighten the screws for a snug fit. If the screws are too tight, the sides will pop back out - which may be how the factory had assembled these cars.


The floor assembly & Kadee couplers:

A good thing is that Aristo appears to accommodate the 180 degree reinstallation of their trucks (with couplers removed). When the truck is rotated from side to side its coupler tang is now free to move without interfering with the floor structure. This facilitates body mounting couplers as it is no longer required to cut off the tang.


Shown below is the coupler pad area for accommodating a body mount Kadee 830 draft gear box. Also, it is much appreciated that Aristo's factory has apparently fixed the bolster pivot post where the trucks mount. The first production run cars had split pivot posts.

Note the 3 holes that are located outside the periphery of the walled area are intended for mounting the box. The wall height serves as a spacer to approximate the location of the desired coupler to railhead distance once the Kadee 830 assembly is installed. The walls also provide clearance for the end bulkhead screw head. (An apparent alternative mounting method would be to use only the rear hole and center front hole of the Kadee box - if one could locate an extra long bulkhead screw - requiring removing Aristo's present long screw and using the extra long replacement for it to pass through both the Kadee box and floor assembly attaching to the body shell near the roof.)

Shown below is the mounted Kadee 830 coupler box assembly.

I used screws salvaged from an old answering machine having a thread pitch meant for threading into plastic. They appear to be about the size of a #4 screw of approx. 1 inch in length. (The holes in the floor pad area are to be drilled through with a smaller size diameter than the screws so as to accept the screw threads.)

Shown below is how the screws threaded through the floor surface within the car.
(Noticing the warpage at the far end, it appears the factory did not fully seat the upper floor board area to its lower section.) The camera found this issue!

Long #4 machine screws could be used with nuts attached at the floor area, but since the car's end bulkhead long screw is captively located under the Kadee box, placing your hand within the car would be necessitated to fasten the nuts by feel. (The end bulkhead long screw being covered over by the Kadee box precludes removable of the floor.)


Retrofitting metal wheels, lubrication & axle skew:

Since these Aristo cars came with plastic wheels, I retrofitted their Bettendorf trucks with Aristo ART-29111B metal wheels.
In the more recent Aristo factory production runs of the DD cars, I noticed the use of a blue / green grease on the axle tips after removing the plastic wheels. The cars described here did not have evidence of any lubricant, so I used a Teflon powered lube in the bushing areas of the journal boxes. Any excess can be cleaned off with a cloth.

Some time ago Aristo-Craft's principal officer, Lewis Polk, recommended the use of Labelle 134 for this purpose as being safe following the cracked journal box problem brought forth when using Electralube on plastic materials that the truck side frames had been made of.
(Newer production run Aristo freight truck side frames are made of a nylon material that do not appear to be damaged if using Aristo's Electralube. But if one is not sure what the material is, it's best not to use Electralube and risk damage.)

Before installing the metal wheels, I placed a 0.030 inch thick nylon washer on either end of the axle tip before installation. This is done to minimize axle skew (e.g. angle of attack of wheel flanges against rail head) with resultant wheel drag when rounding curve track. The hole in the washer is about 0.120 inch diameter for it to fit over the axle.


Shown below is a comparison with the truck on the bottom equipped with the 4 washers - 2 on each axle. The comparative difference can be seen between the two with the bottom example having noticeably less skew than the truck shown at the top that only had the metal wheels installed in place of the original plastic ones.

Lateral axle displacement could still be minimized - perhaps by using up to 0.045 inch thick washers; however, too thick will cause rotational binding as I have found when using 0.060 inch thick washers.


More Kadee coupler info. following truck reinstallation:

Shown below is the Aristo Southern Pacific DD Box car with a Kadee 830 coupler box assembly installed on one end of the car and how it aligns with the Kadee 880 Coupler Height Gauge.

The car coupler aligns reasonably close, but as can be seen it's a bit too low.
Since Aristo supplies a metal washer of about 0.012 inch thick mounted on top of each truck bolster at the pivot post, this could be placed on the underside of the truck (over the pivot post of the floor bolster) thus raising the car up some for better coupler alignment. However, I have found the car to exhibit excessive rocking or wobble when doing so. (Incidentally, this is how Aristo shipped the earlier production run DD cars, and it's appreciated they don't do this now.)

As to this minimal height mismatch, it should be understood that the car as equipped from the Aristo factory is supplied with plastic wheels and these wheels measured to be about 0.020 inch greater in diameter at their tread when compared to the Aristo ART-29111B metal wheels that have been retrofitted here. Thus, one half of this difference (0.010 inch) is the amount that the car would be lowered with these metal wheels installed. It's possible Aristo may have overlooked this and designed the floor pad coupler wall height, accordingly. If so, consideration could have been afforded to folks that would want to mount Kadee couplers would also likely want metal wheels on their cars, too.

The picture below shows how the coupler alignment appears with 0.012 inch thick spacer washer placed between the car floor bolster and truck - thus raising the car up by that amount.

This looks to be fairly close in alignment to the Kadee 880 coupler gauge with maybe just a tad low.
Since the car exhibits rocking with this spacer washer, my preference is to trim the coupler pad wall height down by about 0.015 inch.

The following picture show what the car looks like with the Kadee 830 coupler assembly installed:

Note how the coupler box seems to project out from the end of the car.



This coupler box projection favors a wider space between coupled cars - of benefit when rounding tight curves.

When comparing the coupler box projection to prototype cars, it would appear that this would best emulate Southern Pacific's "Hydra Cushion" or Santa Fe's "Shock Control". For the more common era cars, it may be of consideration to mount the coupler box assembly more flush with the bulkhead end of the car, but this would require drilling new mounting holes in the car floor and also require trimming some material off the Aristo truck bolster tang. See below picture:

The below picture illustrates how the Kadee box tends to restrict the rotation angle of the truck when compared to the Aristo truck mount coupler. (The wheels' backsides contact the Kadee box.) This may be of concern on tight diameter track curves.


-Ted