Joined
·
6,818 Posts
I spent last week preparing one of the new Bachmann boxcars for my EBT consist, and it was Deja Vu All Over Again, (to quote Yogi Berra) as I did the same conversion about 6 years ago on an old Bachmann boxcar.
I won't bore you with the details as Kevin did the same thing recently and gave us chapter and verse in this thread: archive.mylargescale.com/forum/topic.asp
However, as I don't have a baby daughter or a full time job, I had a bit more time to work on it, so I went a bit further with the end trusses and roof - those neat grabs on the side roof walks are actually cobbled up from a pair of the Bachmann grabs taken off the side of the car.
This is the end of my car, where it was a pain to fit the truss around the ladders. I was going to thread the truss rod and use a real nut, but after I bought the taps and dies, I gave them to the wife so she'd have something useful to give me for my birthday! Those big nuts are Ozark fakes.
The day I took the photos the light was brilliant, so I got out my bigger camera and uploaded a full-size shot:
Large_pic_of_Petes_boxcar_225KB!
(I thought you'd like the alternate shot of the two cars, looking across the Chesapeake Bay to the bridge.)
A while ago, I posted a couple of shots of the amazing boxcar details and Jack mentioned the hardware totally hidden behind the boards above the doors:
Bachmann is really overdoing things. That pawl for the brake shaft ratchet pivots on a tiny nylon pin that is pushed into the base. Apart from the problem of losing it, you can't really tell that the pawl moves - nor would you want to? This rivet counting has gone too far, IMHO.
Finally, you may recall the problems with the first Bachmann 1:20 cars, in particular the flat car, where all the details fell off as soon as you looked at it. Bachmann learned already - this car has very firmly attached details. So well attached that I broke off a corner foot grab - had to use an old Hopper nylon one to replace it. You can see it in the pics if you look closely.

I won't bore you with the details as Kevin did the same thing recently and gave us chapter and verse in this thread: archive.mylargescale.com/forum/topic.asp
However, as I don't have a baby daughter or a full time job, I had a bit more time to work on it, so I went a bit further with the end trusses and roof - those neat grabs on the side roof walks are actually cobbled up from a pair of the Bachmann grabs taken off the side of the car.
This is the end of my car, where it was a pain to fit the truss around the ladders. I was going to thread the truss rod and use a real nut, but after I bought the taps and dies, I gave them to the wife so she'd have something useful to give me for my birthday! Those big nuts are Ozark fakes.

The day I took the photos the light was brilliant, so I got out my bigger camera and uploaded a full-size shot:
Large_pic_of_Petes_boxcar_225KB!
(I thought you'd like the alternate shot of the two cars, looking across the Chesapeake Bay to the bridge.)

A while ago, I posted a couple of shots of the amazing boxcar details and Jack mentioned the hardware totally hidden behind the boards above the doors:

Bachmann is really overdoing things. That pawl for the brake shaft ratchet pivots on a tiny nylon pin that is pushed into the base. Apart from the problem of losing it, you can't really tell that the pawl moves - nor would you want to? This rivet counting has gone too far, IMHO.
Finally, you may recall the problems with the first Bachmann 1:20 cars, in particular the flat car, where all the details fell off as soon as you looked at it. Bachmann learned already - this car has very firmly attached details. So well attached that I broke off a corner foot grab - had to use an old Hopper nylon one to replace it. You can see it in the pics if you look closely.