Walthers Tank Car Repair

This 65' LPG tank car and I go way back. This is a Walthers kit that I assembled in the summer of 1999 while building my first layout. Technically it is too modern for my 1970s-era layout - if you read the fine print on the side of the car there is a reference to testing conducted in 1989 - but I'm not bothered by that. It will look just fine for now.

Note that there is no coupler on one end of the car. The original press-fit coupler box cover fell off at some point and the coupler fell out too. I thought I saved the missing parts, but I sure can't find them now. To get this car back in service, I'm going to fabricate a replacement coupler box cover. I fully expect to find the missing piece as soon as I complete this project.

Step 1 was to remove the one remaining coupler box cover and measure it. Note the raised lip on the top of the cover.

I cut a piece of 0.040" styrene for the new cover and a piece of 0.005" styrene for the raised lip, then laminated them together with styrene cement.

While waiting for the glue to dry, I converted the stock coupler box to be screw-mounted. In order to work on the bottom of the car without damaging the details on the top of the tank, I rested the inverted car on two Accurail boxes, which were just narrow enough to fit between the end grab irons and the center handrails around the dome. I drilled out the hole in the boss on the coupler box with a #50 drill, cut off the pin on the box cover, drilled a #43 hole through the cover, and mounted the cover with a 2-56 screw. This is when I noticed that the car didn't have stirrups. 

The stirrups are separate pieces that fit into the small slots on the corners of the end platform. Luckily I still had the extra parts that I didn't use when I assembled it over 20 years ago. (No, the missing coupler box cover wasn't with them.) The tabs on the stirrups were too big to fit into the slots, so I had to both trim them shorter and file them thinner to get them to fit. I also scraped the paint out of the slots so the styrene cement would bond well. 

This car was already equipped with metal wheels, but they were scale 33"-diameter wheels and this car should have 36" wheels. After installing 36" wheels, I checked the coupler height. It was close, but the coupler wanted to droop a bit. I decided to add shims of 0.005" styrene to the coupler box covers to prevent this.

Here are the coupler box covers with the 0.005" styrene shims installed to prevent coupler droop. I have also drilled a #43 clearance hole in the replacement cover. Next step was to paint the replacement cover black.

While waiting for the paint to dry, I turned my attention to the handrails around the dome. When I originally assembled the car, I did not install the stanchions. This was probably for the same reason I didn't install the stirrups; they didn't fit well straight out of the box.

The stanchions were already too long, but by installing the handrails as shown so that they went all the way through the mounting holes down to the tank, now they were way too long. 

I carefully shortened all 4 stanchions until they fit. I found it easiest to work from the top down, deepening the notch by cutting off thin slices from half of the stanchion thickness only until the notch fit under the handrail. Then I trimmed the excess length from the other half of the stanchion and glued the stanchion in place. Once all 4 were installed, I touched up the paint.

Here's the end of the car with the replacement box cover installed.

Coupler height looks good.

Ready to return to service.