HLW "Mini Series" cars

[Benjamin Maggi]

I will check it out. I plan to get a couple and build one with my fiancee, so that she can try out building kits too.

[piercedan]

I have metal wheels on mine and I changed to Kadee couplers. 

 I do not care for the plastic coupler spring on the HLW line, some are weak, others are way too strong.  The Kadee's are great.

  

[vsmith]

Theres also room on the end beams for buffers, I noticed they were similar to the end beams of a Mamod boxcar I have.

The LGB wheels will not add enough weight to the car as solid metal wheels would, thats the one single flaw these great little cars suffer from. If you add solid metal wheels, they add enough weight to keep the cars on track and they will track well, the spoked wheels are a bit lighter, so I would suggest adding a couple self adhesive tire weights to the underside.

[John Busby]

Hi scoobster 28

The single most important change to the hartland flat cars is the wheels replace them with spoked wheels LGB ones will be fine for that if not a little pricey

But that alone would would help quite a lot in persuading people of the supposed UK origins of the stock.

The ideal guards van would be a slight variation on K's 1/2 caboose, which funny about that is built on a hartland mini car.

There is a thread on it in the pull out plans list which will tell you which GR mag it was in and where the templates can be got from 

You could even use the same templates just putting lookouts over two of the windows and a solid back on the veranda and using UK style tail lamps instead of US marker lamps

Just my 50 cents worth

regards John

[Benjamin Maggi]

Just what I wanted to know. Thanks.

[kstrong]

The cars are 4 1/2" long, 3 3/8" wide, and the top of the deck sits 1 1/2" above the rails. (The stakes add an additional 1 1/2" to the height.)

Later,

K

[Benjamin Maggi]

I want to modify a couple of their "flat cars with stakes" into some small British freight cars, but cannot find the dimensions of the cars. As built, (not including the height of the stakes), how wide and long are the cars flatbed... not including the couplers, and how tall is the flatbed of the car itself?

Thanks.