ZAP THE GAP by Peter Atonna

Transcription

1 ZAP THE GAP by Peter Atonna Yes, I love passenger trains. At one time I had examples of almost every postwar passenger set. I think I personally supported Bob Herrick and Ron White during their days of Phoenix Railwaypassenger car production. More recently, K Line set the bar even higher with great looking 18and 21 inch aluminum passenger cars. Great looks, interiors, close coupling. Then Lionel announced their entry into the passenger car one upmanship derby. Seeing the prototypes at York last fall meant that a set of new Santa Fe s would be under the Christmas tree this last year. And they were. Great Christmas morning anticipation when opening them. They are stunning and now have raised the bar again for detail, interiors, trucks, and fully detailed car to car diaphragms. Later that day I had them on the layout to show off to Mary Jane. But, I was afraid of what was coming, and it did. That is horrible she said upon looking at them. I couldn t show off all the neat new features, not even the finish and sparkle. She just kept looking at the huge gap between the cars and said No good, send them back!.. Actually there were three things that keep them from being great models, the coupler spacing problem, car bodies which are mounted a little high on the trucks and a rear coupler on the observation car that doesn t couple with anything. We will correct the most glaring, the coupler spacing problem. Lowering the cars an eight inch isn t feasible for the visual benefit gained, and I did fix the rear coupler problem, too. Two out of three taint bad!

2 But, as usual, she was right. For reasons known only to Lionel, not only are the gaps between current locos and tenders and diesel units way too big, the gap between the new cars was larger than anything I had ever seen. Just to check, I did a shot of the new cars next to postwar O gauge aluminum passenger cars and 027 cars.. Neither had a gap as large - and they ran perfectly around O and 027 curves to boot! Well I didn t send the cars back, but I did set myself to correcting the problem. Looking at the truck and coupler construction, it appeared there might be a pretty simple solution, move the coupler head back in the bracket holding it. I did, and it made a tremendous difference. Now Mary Jane only winces when I tell her there are three more cars in the series that I must have. Here is what I did. First two warnings. If you are worried about loosing the collector s value of the cars, don t do this project. It will permanently alter your cars. My minimum curves are 072. The cars work great on them, but I have not checked them on tighter radius curves, such as 054. The tools you will need are small and medium sized phillips head screwdrivers, tweezer (for picking up very little screws), pliers, ACC superglue and a cutting tool with a fiberglass cutoff disc. Car Disassembly * remove two screws under each car end and take off the ends. * remove six little screws on the underbody detail plate, tilt one side up and lift off. * remove four screws from the steel underbody, two on each end of each truck. One will be hard to see, it is

3 under the coupler shank. * tilt the underbody and push off the two washers securing the trucks. Truck Disassembly * remove four screws holding the truck side frames. * remove the four small screws holding the halves of the truck frame together. * unplug the steel plate hooked over the uncoupling alignment bracket Coupler Modification (see the drawing) * grind the tops off the two rivets on top of the coupler bracket. Work the coupler head loose. * cut back the coupler bracket with your cutoff disc, see the diagram * cut back the uncoupling bar slot so it stops just ahead of the alignment bracket * grind off the rivets on the coupler shank so the top is smooth * scrape off the paint from the underside of the coupler bracket for a better gluing surface * reassemble the assembly by reinserting the uncoupling rod back into the coupler shank and threading it through the alignment bracket. * use your ACC cement to glue the coupler shank back into the bracket, butting it back against the uncoupling alignment bracket. Clamp the assembly and let it set for a couple of hours. * now comes the impossible part. You should shorten the spring metal portion of the uncoupling rod. But every time I tried to bend it into a U shape, it snapped off. It is just too brittle and thin. So, I just left it off since I don t use automatic uncoupling for my cars anyway. The relocated hand tab uncouples them just fine. But if you want to retain the automatic uncoupling, take a piece of piano wire, loop it through the rivet at the end of the uncoupling bracket and then around the top of the uncoupling tab, being sure to measure the length so the tab is held up by the wire. In that way, pulling down on the tab,pulls the wire and opens the knuckle on the coupler. Now it is time to reverse your disassembly steps to put everything back together again. It actually takes almost as long to read about the process as to do it. I managed two cars an hour from start to finish. And for me, it was well worth the time. Now look at this train with the diaphragms almost touching.. A thing of beauty! Hey Lionel, how about doing this fix yourself so I will not have to do it on the remaining three cars.

4 Oh, and about the rear coupler. Lionel made a nice dummy coupler, but it isn t sized to mate with another coupler. But I noticed that some of my AMT passenger cars have an almost scale sized coupler that does mate with Lionels. So, I ordered one from Olsen s Train Parts, cut off the shank, painted it black and mounted it on the screw that held the Lionel original. Sure it will not be used often, but I now know that if I need to, my yard switcher can pull the train back into the yards.

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