Accurail TP&W PS Covered Hoppers

Accurail released kits for TP&W Pullman-Standard 4,750 cubic-foot covered hoppers in 2019. These kits represent cars from a series of 30 built in February 1974 and numbered 18151-18180. The Accurail car is only available in one number, 18164, but a decal set of additional numbers is available from Accurail. I purchased 3 of these cars and the decal set soon after they became available.

After assembling one of the kits in January of this year (pictured above), I'd have to say that I was a bit disappointed overall. The finished car looks good detail-wise and the lettering is good, but its maroon color is too dark compared to the prototype cars, which were painted the same red-orange as other 1970s-era TP&W equipment. In addition, assembly was quite a bit more difficult than other Accurail cars, though to be fair covered hoppers are much more complex than boxcars. I wasn't too eager to assemble the other two kits after my experience with the first one so I waited several months until now. I learned from my mistakes the first time around and things went more smoothly this time.

Coupler Height

The cars come with scale 33"-diameter wheels, while the prototype cars have 36"-diameter wheels. Replacing the stock wheels with scale 36" wheels is trivial; however, the coupler height was borderline too high with the 33" wheels so using the larger wheels would make the coupler height even worse. Initially I decided to live with 33" wheels on TP&W 18164. 3 inches in HO scale is only about 1/32 inch in 1:1 scale and I didn't think the difference would be very noticeable, but my eyes weren't fooled. 

33"-diameter wheels on TP&W 18164 (left) and 36"-diameter wheels on ITC 1735 (right)

It's typically much easier to shim up cars to correct low couplers than it is to lower couplers that are too high, but luckily the Accurail coupler box design makes it easy to add a shim above the coupler to lower it. I made my shims out of 0.010"-thick styrene and attached them to the underframe with double-sided tape as shown below. I drilled a #43 hole in each shim to clear the coupler box screw.

The coupler boxes fit too tightly over the underframe and require filing/scraping of their inside edges. The instructions do warn that some paint may need to be scraped off of the coupler boxes to ensure a proper fit, but I found that I needed to remove some plastic too.

Here's the 18164 with 36" wheels and no coupler shim. Coupler is too high. 

With the coupler shim in place, now the coupler height is perfect.

Bolsters

On most HO scale freight cars, the bolsters to which the trucks are mounted are cast into the underframe or floor. On the Accurail PS 4750 as shown below, the bolsters are separate pieces that must be attached to the underframe.

The separate bolsters wouldn't be a bad thing if it weren't so easy to mount them off-kilter. I found this out the hard way when I assembled the first kit back in January. I managed to attach one of the bolsters a bit crooked, and the car simply wouldn't stay on the track on its inaugural run on the layout. I was glad I had used cyanoacrylate glue to attach the bolsters, so it wasn't difficult to pop off the bad one and try again. In my opinion, the bolster pieces could be substantially improved by adding raised tabs on their top sides that key into the underframe and ensure proper alignment.

When I assembled the other two kits, I used a #50 drill bit as a guide to ensure that the hole in the bolster piece was aligned with the hole in the underframe. Slow-setting cyanoacrylate gel allows enough working time to tweak the alignment. This time around I had no issues with bolster alignment.

Renumbering

The image below shows the contents of Accurail's renumbering decal set for these cars. The large numbers are for the car sides and the small numbers are for the ends.

I decided to renumber my cars to 18162 and 18167 so I would only have to change one digit on the car sides. Most Accurail cars have a very flat finish that does not promote decal adhesion. The finish on these covered hoppers has a bit more of a sheen than other Accurail cars, but I still thought a gloss coat would be a good idea. I applied masking tape to all but the immediate areas around the numbers and gave the cars a couple of light coats of Testor's Glosscote from a spray can. The masking was tedious and felt like overkill, but I haven't forgotten that I once ruined the finish on an entire locomotive with a bad can of Glosscote when I only needed to coat a couple of small areas, so the masking is insurance against that happening again.

My original plan was to apply the decals with the masking still in place so I wouldn't have to mask again for the final flat finish, but I didn't leave myself much room to maneuver the decals and the tape soaked up the decal setting solutions so I had to remove some of the tape right around the numbers. 

On the car sides I only applied "2" and "7" decals over the "4". Because the numbers on the ends are much smaller, I applied decals for the full car numbers over the factory-printed number. Experience with these Accurail decals has taught me to use fresh knife blades and make many light passes when cutting out the numbers to prevent flaking paint and jagged edges. For setting solution, I used Microscale Micro Sol. Once the decals were dry, I re-masked around them and sealed them with a couple of light coats of Testor's Dullcote.

The decal numbers aren't as opaque white as the factory-printed numbers, but you have to look closely to notice this. The finished cars are shown below.