First of all I owe a shout of
Thanks! to
@svedblen for his terrific thread showing
his O-scale covered hoppers, which has inspired me to get moving with this effort. This is a 2-rail Atlas O model that I have had from some time ago and I had done a preliminary, crude conversion to Proto:48 just to see how it would come out. Now it's time for me to follow thru and give this the attention that it deserves. I'll be working on a proper P:48 conversion, plus an upgrade of the details and a weathering job.
I recall when I first unboxed this model, how I was struck by the sheer size and mass that it conveys - particularly to someone like myself who was used mostly to N scale and thought of HO as "big". Tho I suppose if you model 1:29 like
@tom mann then it's hardly anything to write home about
. But for me it was an eye-opener, hence I had dubbed it "The BEAST".
Enough with the words, here is what the model is looking like today, after the preliminary trucks/couplers conversion:
And here is a quick pic with a similar N scale model, just to highlight the size difference:
(Aside: Apologies for the
very rudimentary layout, it has been a WIP for a while now.)
In these pics you can see the conversion of the Atlas O 2-rail truck to Proto:48. The left-hand truck is my initial conversion. This simply took the existing 100-ton Atlas truck and popped off the factory OW5 wheels, and pressing some NWSL 36-inch, Code 115 wheels in their place on a drill press. The only tricky part was the plastic bushings, which I had to file down a bit since they were slightly large for the NWSL wheels. My setup was crude, and I was not always successful at getting the wheels pressed on true (I still have a few useless, wobbly wheelsets sitting in a drawer somewhere... it's only a failure if you don't learn from it
).
One striking thing about this is the huge gap between the wheels & sideframes, since the P:48 wheels are much thinner and also closer together in gauge. The truck still has the factory bolsters so it had not been narrowed.
A couple of things about the right-hand truck. First of all, it is the newer version of the Atlas O 2-rail truck, which is now being used on Atlas' newer models. (This one came from another model, but you can get them separately too.) This has much thinner sideframes and it also is cast with foundry markings, which are a very nice touch. Importantly, the thinner sideframes made it possible to use the NWSL shouldered axle wheelset, which was a lot simpler than having to press wheels on and off the factory axle. Notice too that the NWSL wheelsets also have a much better axle profile.
The other main part of this conversion was the bolster, which I made from some rectangular brass tubing. I made it the right length so that it would narrow the truck closer to prototype width, and so that the axle bearing caps could be fit onto the axles. You do have to enlarge the axle holes in the bearing caps, but that is not a big task. Here is what it looks like all disassembled:
The brass tubing is obviously hideous and looks nothing like the prototype, but in this case my
philosophy rationale is that it will be under the model where no one will ever see it. I'm not planning to detail the underframe - altho my hat is always off to those who do so - and if I were then I would be better off going a completely different route and use the Protocraft trucks. In that vein, just for grins here is a pic of the Protocraft P:48 truck next to an unmodified Atlas 2-rail Ow5 truck:
So the next step for the trucks is to get all the parts cleaned up and ready for some paint.
Another part of this conversion is the car bolster and couplers:
All that I have done so far with the bolster is stack up some washers to get the correct height with the revised truck. The coupler pocket is interesting: it is a Shapeways part designed specifically for the Berwick. The couplers are the brass Clouser coupler from Protocraft. These have the long shank which is appropriate for this kind of car & pocket. I did have to add some shim material to the shank to get the right thickness & keep it from wobbling too much. That long brass screw will of course also be trimmed to the right length at some point. Noe that it's smaller than the actual hole -- one reason for that it to allow a bit of travel for when couplings are being made. I'll probably lengthen the hole for a bit more travel, but since I don't know what's right for the prototype I'll probably just go with something that looks neat to the eye.
Plenty more to do here so stay tuned! All thoughts and comments are of course most welcome!
Cheers,
Ed
