Fixing old stuff
#1
My parents moved a few years ago, and when they did a box of old HO cars from my youth wound up my house.  

Replacing wheels, couplers, and weathering are easy projects that can keep me busy when I only have 15-30 minutes here and there to model, and my workbench is crowded with other "to dos".  Doesn't make much financial sense to fix the old Tycos and Bachmanns, as the parts cost more than the car is worth.  But it is fun.

Here are some Athearn F7s, One of the first locomotives I bought with my own money when I was about 13 or 14.  I repainted them using craft paint from wally world, bought some decals, fixed a broken step, broken truck sideframe, broken axle gears, added a close coupling kit and diaphragms, and used a kit to make the windshields more prototypical  Still needs some finish work, but it runs for the first time in about 25 years.


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Kevin
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#2
Here are two Tyco BN boxcars that date back to the 1970s.  These were my favorite as a kid because they were Green, and as a result BN was my favorite railroad.  I've been snipping the coupler off the trucks and replacing the wheelsets, body mounting couplers, and weathering with cheap craft paint.  Looks like I had not replaced the wheels or couplers yet when this photo was taken.


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#3
This is an old Athearn coach.  The first passenger car owned, bought used with my own money at a train show.  It may have been the first HO car I bought myself.  I am guessing I was about 12.  I am planning on stripping it and repainting it.  The problem?  I don't know what happened to the floor or trucks.  I am guessing it is still in some box at my parents new house, or in a box that was given to one of my brothers.  The chance of finding it amongst their junk is slim right now.  I know there were two more coaches like this - but not sure where they wound up.  

I can buy a new floor and trucks for about 20 bucks, but I could probably buy a whole new car for much less than than that.  Still for sentimental reasons, I am considering buying the new floor and trucks and restoring this one.


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#4
No need to waste money on new floors, Kevin, as I have two of them.  Each is missing one of the steps, but I can splice the good-end of one onto the other one, after removing its broken end.  Or, alternatively, I could send you both of them as-is, in case you might want to scratchbuild a combine, which would need steps at only one end, as the baggage-end would use stirrup steps with grabirons above.
A third option would be for me to fix the step on one of them, then send it, along with what's left of the other - good as a spare part or as a start for a scratchbuild.  Unfortunately,  don't have trucks for these cars, but they should be available from Athearn.

Send me a PM with your mailing address, and I'll send them along, probably next week.

Wayne
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#5
Speaking of repairing steps - the end of this covered hopper got crushed.  I repaired the steps with styrene scraps.  I bought the hopper with a $15 gift certificate I won as a door prize at a show.


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#6
i have replacement trucks that would be a lot less than getting them from athearn  there the old metal side frames. might have a floor also ide have to look in junk box.
Jim

PS nice save on the hopper .
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#7
Here are some reefers that I replaced wheelsets and couplers and weathered.  The Ralston Purina is ubiquitous Tyco.  The Santa Fe I think is Life-Like  These are durable enough to let my 4-year-olds pick them up.


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#8
Yeah, the Santa Fe car is definitely LifeLike (proto-no-thousand).  I picked-up three of those for a buck apiece off the "used" table at a now long gone hobbyshop.
After stripping off the too-heavy paint, I added a few details, then repainted them as ice-service cars, delivering ice from a storage facility to various along-the-line ice and coal dealers...

   


   



Later, it occurred to me that such cars would have had their end ice bunkers removed, as the ice was stacked in the cars, not loaded into the bunkers, so I decided to remove the original roofs, with their hatches and hatch platforms...


   


   


   

The 2305 was a more recent acquisition, sitting somewhat damaged in a box of parts, but I was able to repair it, then give it an upgrade, too.

Here's a LINK to the long, drawn-out process.

I also had one of those Tyco reefers, and after stripping off the factory paint, was surprised at how nicely-rendered the board detail was, although it doesn't show-up very well in the photo below...

   

After that, I watched for more on that "used" table every time I visited that store, and managed to get three more at the same $1.00 price.  They were cleaned-up and got similar details as the first one, but I opted to letter them for my freelanced Grand Valley Railroad's  GVEX  (Grand Valley Export Ltd.).

   

   

   

Some years later, I noticed that the floors of the Tyco cars were sagging.  I could have simply cemented the floors in-place, but I don't usually like to seal-up a car, in case I need access in order to add or secure weight.

I decided to take a somewhat different tack, and here's the result...

   

   

   

   

Here's a LINK to the entire tedious step-by-step process.

Wayne
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#9
Thanks for sharing, Wayne.  Amazing work.  And I agree, that Tyco floor wont stay flat.
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#10
Great work on restoring the cars and engines, Kevin. I too have a set of Athearn Passenger trucks, the newer plastic ones with the half metal, half plastic wheelsets. Let me know if you want them and they can be in the mail shortly/
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#11
Great work to get the old stuff looking great again Applause


Lutz
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#12
Here is more of a unique one.  The boiler came from my first MDC HOn3 2-8-0 kit.  I left it in the sun to dry after painting, and the sun was strong enough to warp the cab, and put hairline cracks in the smokebox.  I found a new boiler on Ebay, and this one sat in my junk box for 20 years.   The drivers I ordered from Athearn parts right after they bought MDC, knowing those parts would quickly become unavailable.  They said they had a few sets.  The tender is from an IHC 4-4-0 that sat in my junk box for years.  I cut it down for HOn3.   The cab is from an old Bachmann 0-6-0 that I bought at a train show when I was 14.  The thing ran about a week before the axle sleeves cracked.  The frame I designed and 3-d printed.  I also 3-d printed a new smokebox front.  

Yes, it runs, but needs some fine tuning.  Just no place to run it at the moment, so getting it to run smooth is low priority.


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#13
I stripped the paint off the coach and noticed this damage at one end.  Part of the window frame on the door is missing, and that should be easily repairable with a bit of styrene.  Or I could remove this part on all the windows and make square window openings.  The other issue is that the plastic on the end doors on one end seems to have been chemically melted slightly.   The previous owner had installed diaphragms and marker lights on one end with some kind of contact cement (likely Walthers' goo) and I am guessing that dissolved some of of the plastic.  I think I can smooth it out with a little putty, but may need to remake a doorknob.  A little bit of rivet detail on the end seems to be gone (or was never there), but I will ignore that.  I'm also thinking about how I will paint this car to match my others.  On my wooden coaches and my MDC Harriman observation car, I painted the letter board above the windows black with gold lettering.  This car has a much wider area above the window and I think that would not look well.  Either I leave the black off, or only paint the top half black.


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#14
What did you use as a paint stripper, Kevin?  Methyl hydrate works well on older Athearn and MDC stuff, but not so well on some of the more recent types of paint.  It is a type of alcohol (non-drinkable) but if you use it, wear nitrile gloves, as it is readily absorbed through the skin. 
A couple of days ago, I stripped an Athearn postal/baggage car that appears to have been painted with Scalecoat.  Methyl hydrate had no affect on it whatsoever, so I instead used Super Clean, which works well on most model paints, although this one did take some time.

In the past, many modellers used brake fluid as a stripper, and while it does work well on a lot of paints, it can damage some plastics, and I'm not talking about a few missing rivets.  Some years ago, I was stripping a factory-painted Atlas S-2, in a glass canning jar, and when I removed it the next day, the body shell was so shrivelled-up that it was almost unrecognizable.

Wayne
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#15
I used denatured alcohol to get most of the paint off. The rest came off with oven cleaner. The damage to the plastic was not from stripping paint. It was that way when I bought the car used 30+ years ago. The person selling them had two. My brother bought the one without the diaphragms and added details because he noticed the damage. I didn't care, so I bought the other one for probably a dollar or two. I was probably about 12.
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