Theory vs. Practice: The AC&Y Spur 4 Commissioning Process

[learmoia]

The body mounted Accumates I've seen are all held together and attached to the frame with a screw.  I'll be the first to admit I've not seen everything.  I wouldn't think heat sealing is necessary in such an installation.  The Accumate installation as truck mounted coupler are another matter and I fully understand how the heat sealing would help.

Don's post got me to thinking about truck mounted couplers and how many coupler sets I ka-chunked off of trucks.  After some searching I found the pile in one of my parts cabinets and started playing around with turning the cut coupler into a body mount.  Results below.  At the bottom is the 1015.  The top is the ka-chunked coupler set.  Above the 1015 is a modified Accumate truck mounted box.  (Yes the coupler is installed upside down but I made another one right side up and it works fine.)  A clearance hole for a 00-90 screw has been drilled through.  Above that is the coupler box part with the coupler post drilled out and what I believe is a 1-72 washer slipped over the post.  The thought is by eliminating the top cover I may be able to also eliminate the axle clearance issues I described above.  The centering whiskers do not have the forward stops to preload against however and might impact performance.  I got this idea from a comment @learmoia made in the Protomate Demise Exaggeration thread.

Tomorrow I'll give the modified Accumate box a try on some of my slinkers and see what happens.

Wait.. what?  I gave someone an idea?

[SAH]

Test results from a not very scientific study.
I'm pushing a string of cars of varying lengths off the main to a siding.  The height difference between the main and siding is probably 1/8" max.
     A 1015 equipped car at the end of the string (furthest from the locomotive) will bounce on the downgrade.  Always.
     The lighter the car the more exaggerated the bounce.
     Speed matters.  Slower yields less bounce
If you've gotten this far into the thread you are not surprised by the results.
     Place the Accumate cars at the end and one 1015 equipped car between the loco and the Accumate euipped cars and the bounce decreases.
     As I added cars next to the loco the bounce all but disappeared.

The test subjects with Accumate installed are pictured below.

Obviously in an operating session environment it is impractical to expect that an Accumate equipped car will be at the end of a pushed string.  Placing Accumates on the lightest cars would help but only by increasing the odds a so equipped car will be at the end of the string.  Not a satisfying solution.

I was able to make the truck mounted Accumates into body mounts (visible on the top car), with some caveats however.  The plastic seems softer (more flexible) than the 1015 like Accumate boxes and the design of the two part box does not allow a good tight connection to the underframe without restricting coupler centering.  The top part of the box flexes I think.  I have an idea to fix that however.  I'll give it a try this afternoon.

[Tom L]

Here’s a few pics of what I was thinking about in my earlier post regarding minimizing slinky. This is just a mock up to illustrate.  In the first pic you can see that the back of the 1015 extends out the back of the coupler box when the spring is compressed or being pushed in reverse. It’s not much (the quick cell phone picture doesn’t show it very well either). 

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Here is a bit of plastic strip filling the gap between where the center sill stops and the back of the coupler,er box.

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This has the coupler pushing against the “sill” rather than than against the compression of the spring to avoid bouncing

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I guess it’s kind of like if MT 1015s had the back of the box enclosed.

Tom L
Wellington CO

[Tom L]

Oh yeah, if nothing else, it shows how I modify a Deluxe innovations 1944 AAR boxcar underframe to body mounts and BLMI/Atlas trucks. I filed the area to the right of the bolster (towards center of car) down for wheel clearance, filled the gap with plastic strip to simulate the center sill and recessed the flathead 00-90 mounting screw. I upped the weight of the car by about 1/3rd.

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Tom L
Wellington CO

[SAH]

I have just the car for a trial of your idea Tom.  I'll give it a try.

I was able to successfully body mount a truck mounted cut off coupler AND get enough force applied with the screw to hold the box in place without messing up the coupler centering action.  The only modification I made was to cut off the clips that hold the box together per the original design and flip the coupler back to the original orientation relative to the coupler box parts.  The photo shows the modification.

I think I'll do all my hoppers this way, eventually.  Then wait for something better to come along for the rest of the fleet.  This coupler mod stuff is hard work.  I'll leave it to the pros from now on.   

[Sokramiketes]

Preach on, Steve.  The screw head on a 1015 coupler box is ALWAYS in the way.  The box is way too big, too thick, and it's so fiddly to make it work.  (Throwing out the MTL button head screws, finding 00-90 flat heads at a reasonable price, re-chamfering the MTL hole, filing the head down more after mounting... etc etc etc. 

Then, you do all that on a metal underframe car, like a string of Atlas twin bay hoppers, and you don't watch the orientation on your metal wheelsets, and all of the sudden you're melting trucks because the screw shorts on the axles...

1015 box sucks.  It was the ultimate irony to see it attached to the TruScale coupler.

The 905 Z scale is so much better size wise, in terms of mounting the box, that it helps installation.  But the operations aspect is worse. 

There is a lot of opportunity for someone to break into the market with a standard coupler, bolster height, and integrated system that actually works for operations. 

I'm dreaming of the right coupler, and then a whole line of replacement underframes that can be 3D printed as needed.  I'm also way past filing metal underframes...

[cjm413]

Preach on, Steve.  The screw head on a 1015 coupler box is ALWAYS in the way.  The box is way too big, too thick, and it's so fiddly to make it work.  (Throwing out the MTL button head screws, finding 00-90 flat heads at a reasonable price, re-chamfering the MTL hole, filing the head down more after mounting... etc etc etc. 

Then, you do all that on a metal underframe car, like a string of Atlas twin bay hoppers, and you don't watch the orientation on your metal wheelsets, and all of the sudden you're melting trucks because the screw shorts on the axles...

1015 box sucks.  It was the ultimate irony to see it attached to the TruScale coupler.

The 905 Z scale is so much better size wise, in terms of mounting the box, that it helps installation.  But the operations aspect is worse. 

There is a lot of opportunity for someone to break into the market with a standard coupler, bolster height, and integrated system that actually works for operations. 

I'm dreaming of the right coupler, and then a whole line of replacement underframes that can be 3D printed as needed.  I'm also way past filing metal underframes...

Replacement underframes would be great, but they raise the issue as to what kind of trucks they should be designed to accept, e.g.

1) trucks that have the bolsters and kingpins in the correct location (e.g. BLMA, ESM, etc.).   This would be ideal for obvious reasons, but from a practical standpoint, the variety of prototypes is somewhat limited, and the supply can be short enough to put a project in a holding pattern for a considerable amount of time;

2) trucks with high bolster arms and offset kingpins.  Ideally these trucks belong in the same landfill as discarded Rapido couplers (with the exception of using them on cars that had already been designed to accept them).  Practically speaking, I already have a 💩load of these trucks that have been removed from cars that needed something different, and any trucks that I don't already have are relatively easy to obtain; or

3) high bolster arm and centered kingpin as a compromise between 1 (more variety and/or supply) and 2 (more accurate than 2)

[cjm413]

I've said this a number of times, but nobody seems to listen. Accumates work well if you do the same thing Microtrains used to tell you to do with theirs. Heat seal the boxes.

I agree with Ed, just as happy to lose the pins. More trouble than they're worth and aren't required to hold the couplers together.

Don

A good number of the Accumates I've liberated from truck mounted coupler boxes have been used to replace broken 1015 couplers in the stock 1015 coupler box.

I also use Accumates in heat sealed 2004 coupler boxes for applications where the big a$$ 1015 coupler box just can't stay out of the way.

[SAH]

Because I sometimes can't leave well enough alone, I've continued testing and fiddling with trucks, wheels and couplers.  I finally ran the entire fleet of prepped rolling stock in some meaningful measure on the layout.  40+, or about 20%, were bad order cars.  Not so hot.  Most of the problems fall into a half dozen or so categories.  Mainly axles dragging on coupler box screws, type of wheel set used and weight, or some combination of the above.

I've figured out how to convert a cut off truck mounted Accumate to a body mount without taking it apart.  I can do a pair in under 5 minutes.  Overcoming that obstacle led to the creation of a full train of Accumate conversions for testing.  I like the difference.  A lot.  One watch out:  Sharp curves.  The conversion box is wider than a 1015 and does not have the little inset at the coupler end to clear the wheels.  The inside of wheels on 50' and longer cars will drag on the coupler box.  There are ways to fix that though.

One other big win:  Scale Trains carbon black hoppers.  I originally used the guts from a 1025 in the factory supplied box as the Sargent replacement.  It worked OK but not good enough.  With some precision surgery (not that precise - I'm doing the surgery after all) and a 1-72 screw as the centering pin I can use Accumate guts in the factory supplied box.  It's a little more complicated than that but not by much.  A good thing, 'cause I love my carbon black cars.