Axle wipers for freight cars?

[BRVRR]

I was in the same boat a few months ago and couldn't find what I wanted at a reasonable price.

I have long used home-made wipers of .005 brass or soft copper or bronze wire wrapped around the metal axles on Athearn passenger cars.

A recent project to light a couple of Athearn BB bay-window cabooses lead to using Kadee coupler springs as wipers.

This link will take you to the What's New page on my website where I have a few pictures posted of my caboose project. It may help or give you a few ideas.

http://www.intergate.com/~acoates149/What's%20New2.html

The brass wipers I make are shown on my Rolling Stock page. Unfortunately they are just shown as components, but the photo might help. Click on the link below and scroll down the page.

http://www.intergate.com/~acoates149/SL%20Passenger%20Consist.html

Hope this helps. Good luck.

[skagitrailbird]

Several variations are shown here:http://www.trainaidsa.com/shop-accessories.shtml

Good luck!

[MisterBeasley]

My LHS guy showed me some that he made.  It looks very similar to the picture above, but he made it by simply bending and snipping a Kadee coupler pocket spring.

[maxman]

Southwest Chief

I need to pickup track power for some freight cars.  They have plastic trucks with Intermountain metal wheels.

JayBee used to make some really nice axle wipers in their lighting kits, especially their Athearn caboose lighting kit with wipers that fit Athearn freight trucks. 

Bowser makes a caboose lighting kit, item 74060, that sounds like it could be workable for you.  For a description, scroll to the bottom of the following link: http://www.bowser-trains.com/hocars/n5/n5.htm.  The kit includes bronze pickups that wipe on the axle and are mounted in a similar fashion to what is shown in your picture.  If you don't need the entire kit, maybe they'll price the pickups separately.  I have a friend that uses them on his cabooses for track occupancy purposes.

[Train Modeler]

Those HO scale pickups for sale by SBC on Ebay look interesting.    Have you tried, do they raise the car up too high?

[woodone]

Here is a place that might be of some help to you.

 

http://www.sbs4dcc.com/nscalerepairparts.html

[nedthomas]

Micromark sells a miniature tin snips for $15.40 item # 82525.

You can use an old scissors to cut thin metal but they may not cut paper after you use them. Keep them just to cut metal.

[Train Modeler]

I've gone to using .015 brass/copper wire and soldering a electrical wire to it and then drilling and inserting it into the truck.  

Just did a crane this way. 

BTW, those JB sets were good.

Richard

[Southwest Chief]

I need to pickup track power for some freight cars.  They have plastic trucks with Intermountain metal wheels.

JayBee used to make some really nice axle wipers in their lighting kits, especially their Athearn caboose lighting kit with wipers that fit Athearn freight trucks.  Unfortunately these have been long out of production.  Their passenger car lighting kits came with wipers that look like this (in use on my customized Intermountain Hi-Levels):

 

Does anyone make axle wipers specifically sized for Athearn fright cars?  I much prefer axle wipers to wheel tread wipers.

Thinking about using phosphor bronze sheeting and cutting my own.  What do you use to cut this material?