Re-Trucking Passenger Cars

 I have a fairly substantial fleet of Passenger cars. My theory on passenger equipment was always to switch with it as much as with freight cars. This is not exactly true, but I have my passenger trains do a great deal of switching. The job,  I created, to deal with the terminal switch work is the Passenger Foreman. This guy pulls trains out of staging; does all the terminal switch work that needs to be done; switches the Post Office, REA, and creamery as well as the Diner and Pullman, and Business car service tracks; and the passenger car RIP tracks. What else? He makes up several westbound mail and express trains (On those op session days when there are no through passenger trains on the schedule).

He’s pretty busy. 

On AIR1 several key car positions, RPO’s, Mail Storage, and Combines, are filled with Riverossi brand passenger cars. These cars are nice enough looking to serve my purposes, but mechanically they are junk.

The trucks are held in with a friction fit bolster pin, that never holds the trucks in place, and the trucks themselves widen out to the point that the wheels fall out. Junk trucks at best.

Because of this, on AIR1, many of these cars just could not be kept in running shape and ended up on the dead pile, waiting for the day they’d get fixed. Time wore on, other projects, more pressing, took precedence, and these cars never returned to operation. I was particularly upset over losing RPO’s and the small fleet of Mail Storage Bags, all painted and lettered as such, because these cars did A LOT of work. 

They still do, or at least they have a lot of work planned for them. I have a much larger Post Office facility planned, and more complicated switching for the Mail & Express trains. 

Several years ago, while at a swap meet with my friend John Fiscella, I noticed that he was buying a large number of assorted Walther’s Passenger cars from a bargain table. I asked if he planned to model all those far flung roads, “I don’t want the cars, I want the trucks. I can’t buy Walther’s trucks for this price!”

It simply never occurred to me to buy a perfectly good Walther’s Heavy Weight Passenger car, just to junk the body, and use the trucks…

Until I priced the trucks.

Recently I was able to find Walther’s Passenger Trucks, on-line, for roughly $11 a pair, and broke the bank, buying every pair of trucks this guy had.

My next project is to re-truck all my RPO’s, Mail-Storage Bags, and Combines with Walther’s trucks.

The RPO’s and Mail Storage Baggage cars will go back to work in my regular M&E trains. The Combines will go to work on a pet project I’ve been dreaming of for a long time. I’m using them to simulate passenger, Mail, and Express service up the many coal branches on AIR2. The full scope of this service has yet to be fleshed out, but soon, I’ll have serviceable Combines to use. I’m also considering using the combines as “Jim Crow” cars, but this idea, also, is not fully worked out.

Walther’s trucks track well, but they have a problem. Each of these trucks has four large screws that are designed to complete electrical contact between the track and the car body, for people who want to light their passenger cars. I do not want to light my passenger cars, and do not want to contemplate the problems associated with the pyrotechnical displays when one of these cars crosses an electrical boundary with reverse polarity! Additionally these screw heads severely restrict free truck rotation, causing derailments

Again, working with John Fiscella, I learned that by simply grinding the screw heads down a bit, but leaving enough of the Phillips head “cross” so you could remove the screws, you eliminate this electric contact issue and the trucks swivel freely.

Walther’s makes an after market part that fits into the truck mounting hole that accepts a 2-56 screw, which makes attaching these trucks to the bottoms of various different manufacturers cars quite easy.

Currently a huge mess, I have to get my work bench organized and usable!