Modifiying the MT Fast Mail baggage cars

[altohorn25]

I received the Micro Trains Santa Fe Fast Mail set in the mail this afternoon. There are some nice things about it, and some things that are not quite so nice.

The baggage cars don't look "Santa Fe" enough to me, so I thought I would see what I could do about it.

Top photos are the closest prototype car that I could find in my materials to the Micro Trains car. Not exact, but I think I can make it look close.

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Next photo is the stock model.

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Next photos are the car after my modifications: re-tapped the coupler mounting hole to shorten the distance between cars and added Z scale 905's; added FVM 36" metal wheels; cut those ugly things off the ends of the trucks; added bottom sill using a piece of chaneled styrene. That's about it. The paint will blend in better once I weather the car.

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The last two picks are the stock coupler distance with the provided MT 1015's and the other photo is with the MT Z scale 905's and the hole moved back about 1mm.

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I'm happy with the result. Biggest issue that the car still has are those belt rails running the lenght of the car.  Only way to fix that would be to sand them off and repaint/letter the entire car.
 I decided I could live with it as-is.

This car took me about 30 minutes to do and I'm sure I'll get a little quicker the more I do. There are 8 baggage cars that came with the set.

[thomasjmdavis]

The one other thing I might suggest would be to see if you can swap in a roof that does not have the triangular vents that are prominent on the Erie baggage prototype.  I think with some minor futzing (not sure but would bet that the little ridges that serve as "clips" to hold the roof probably don't line up one car to another), the roof from a mail-baggage edit: after looking at roofs, I think the Horse Car roof might be the best option of the various MTL 70' cars. could be substituted (granted, for 8 cars would cost some bucks).  I was going to check for sure, but I seem to have misplaced the mail baggage that I thought was on the workbench.....must be here somewhere....

[brokemoto]

Did All Tramps Sent Free have seventy foot HW baggage cars?  It had eighty foot (RR is  based on ATSF car).

[bbussey]

The one other thing I might suggest would be to see if you can swap in a roof that does not have the triangular vents that are prominent on the Erie baggage prototype.  I think with some minor futzing (not sure but would bet that the little ridges that serve as "clips" to hold the roof probably don't line up one car to another), the roof from a mail-baggage could be substituted (granted, for 8 cars would cost some bucks).  I was going to check for sure, but I seem to have misplaced the mail baggage that I thought was on the workbench.....must be here somewhere....

The baggage-mail roofs can be purchased directly from MTL at an economical cost.

The baggage, baggage-mail, and horse car can interchange roofs. I snapped in baggage balloon roofs onto NSE Limited-run REA horse cars to make them more prototypical.

[thomasjmdavis]

Did All Tramps Sent Free have seventy foot HW baggage cars?  It had eighty foot (RR is  based on ATSF car).

ATSF had hundreds of 70' cars, about 1/2 similar to the one shown in Altohorn25's  post, the balance older cars with fishbelly underframes.  The 80'+ cars (actually, the RR car is short by a couple feet) were a few from rebuilt lounge and baggage lounge cars, and most were one-off or small batches of 3 or 4 and varied in length depending on the length of the original car.  They also rebuilt quite a few coaches into 78' cars.

[eja]

Good job so far .....


BUT those belt rails have to go if you want it to look ATSF


Happy painting.......

eja

[thomasjmdavis]

Good job so far .....


BUT those belt rails have to go if you want it to look ATSF


Happy painting.......

eja

Hoping that M&R sides will be available again before too long.

While the M&R sides are currently hard to come by (if anyone has some they would like to sell or trade for a reasonable price, send me a PM), if you are going to go to the trouble of removing the belt rail (which will no doubt also remove a lot of rivets and other details, what with the cutting and sanding and matching the rivets) replacing the sides would be easier.  Plus ending up with accurate door and rivet placement. @arbomambo  posted a thread some years ago showing how to build up the cars using cut down Rivarossi cars for cores. 

https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=25705.msg258724#msg258724

The MT 70' cars make this even easier, and the MT modular design lends itself to this sort of modification. And frankly, the cost of a MT undec "kit" (the undecs come unassembled) plus the M&R sides is no more than the cost of a Wheels of Time baggage car.

[arbomambo]

I now use that exact MT Erie prototype 70’ baggage as my donor car for my remaining M&R sides ATSF 70’ baggage car conversions - I still have 9 yet to do!
The MT car makes the conversion Soooooo much easier!

[brokemoto]

The baggage-mail roofs can be purchased directly from MTL at an economical cost.

I found the open deck observation round roofs on MT's website, but could not find any for the baggage car.. 

Does anyone out there know if MT is going to issue round roofs for their coaches?

[thomasjmdavis]

I found the open deck observation round roofs on MT's website, but could not find any for the baggage car.. 

Does anyone out there know if MT is going to issue round roofs for their coaches?

Found my Mail-baggage and baggage car projects..... the Horse car roof might be an even better choice than the mail baggage roof.  The horse car roof has clerestory windows/vents that are very similar to the ones shown in the photo of 1717.  There was variety over the various batches, refits, etc, but it has perhaps the best look "out of the box" (well, to me anyway).  And no smokejack mounting to deal with.

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I have found in previous tries that MT has a lot of parts that are not cataloged on the website.  My experience is that if you contact customer service, they provide any parts they have in stock that are not spoken for by current production demands.  I think it is simply a matter that the anticipated sales of some items don't justify the expense of creating webpages and packaging.  But the crew at MT seems happy to put stuff in a baggie and bubble wrap and ship it out.  When they are busy, it can take a while to hear back from them, but I've always had a response eventually.

If there is enough demand for ATSF baggage car roofs, maybe we can convince one of the several designers/companies that do 3D printed and/or resin parts for ATSF cars to produce some.