Getting an estate sale Trains Miniature Reefer running again

[dstarr]

Trains Miniature.  Great maker.  They came on the market and left the market in the 20 odd years I was out of hobby, doing college, 6 year tour with USAF, engineering school, getting married and starting a family.  But when I got back in, there were several guys at the North Shore MRR club who showed me some of the finer points of Trains Miniature models.  So it was a treat to find two Trains Miniature models, unbuilt and half built, with boxes, in a carton of stuff from an estate auction.

   First step was to secure the weights in the built up reefer.  They were loose inside the car and rattled when you picked up the car.  Some silicone adhesive and some small clamps got the weights stuck down good. 

And there was a Kadee missing its knuckle spring.  I have extra knuckle springs and only lost one in the replacement job.

   Then I painted the under carriage and the trucks to kill the black plastic gloss.  I use rattle cans, and lay the parts to be painted on the deck railing to keep the paint smell out of the house.  The undercarriage got light gray auto primer and the trucks got red auto primer.  I decided that as long as I had the paint and the newspaper taped out to protect the railing that I would paint a bunch of the spare trucks rattling around my junk box.  Good thing too.  The two original trucks disappeared somehow so I had to warp a pair of junk box trucks under the car.

 

The junk box trucks came with a molded on plastic snap pin the secure them.  I drilled holes in the truck bolsters with a #29 drill to mate up with the undercarriage of the TM car. 

 

[gmpullman]

I remember seeing my first Train Miniature car, I believe it was the Gerber blue, white and brown baby food car. I recall being impressed, even at my tender age back then, at how nicely detailed and painted the car was, compared to my usual Blue-Box and Roundhouse fare. My dad bought me a Baby Ruth reefer just like this one I recently found at a train show:

Baby-Ruth2 by Edmund, on Flickr

Baby-Ruth by Edmund, on Flickr

— in the box just the way I remember it.

Curtiss_Ice-Reefer by Edmund, on Flickr

It went together just fine. I didn't change anything, other than Kadees, of course, and now I have fond memories of seeing that car from my oh-so-distant past.

Thanks for sharing your treasure   Ed

 

[SeeYou190]

For uncertain reasons I have been building a collection of Train Miniature wooded billboard refrigerated boxcars.

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I like them, and they look great on their display shelf.

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Good work of the rehabilitation of this old car.

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-Kevin

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[dknelson]

Train Miniature found a way to be imaginative with the plastic casting process, so that for example the same sides might appear with different types of ends.  Perhaps the cars were still not exact to a prototype but at least they were steps in the right direction.  

And as pointed out above, they also seemed better able to capture some complex paint and lettering schemes, although still not to the extraordinary level of the Varney lithographed car sides (made of metal). 

I also liked their 40' flatcar, a nice difference and variety from the Athearn blue box.

One oddity or factoid - when replacing the plastic wheels on Train Miniature trucks with metal Kadee wheels (the plastic wheels were perhaps their weakest link) I frugally saved them - and found that they were just about the only commercial wheels I could find that would fit into the bearings of old AHM "Bettendorf" trucks and roll well.  The AHM freight car trucks with their huge flanges (and the wheels themselves were undersized, way under 33") usually had to be tossed but if you could accept the less than glorious TM wheelsets, you could snip off the truck- mounted horn hook coupler, body mount a Kadee, and at least put off the task and expense of retrucking each and every AHM car you had for another day.  

Dave Nelson

 

 

[doctorwayne]

dstarr

 

 

Train Miniature cars are among my favourites, and the boxcar you built is also a good start for some versions that disguise their origin.

Many years ago, I wanted to have some USRA doublesheathed boxcars, but there were, at that time, none available in plastic.  My hometown railroad, the Toronto Hamilton & Buffalo, was the only Canadian railroad to own USRA cars, three hundred of them transferred from the New York Central, a part-owner of the TH&B, along with Canadian Pacific.

While I replaced the TM car's ends with ones from Tichy, I also scribed the TM car's moulded-on sidesills to carry on the scribed siding, thereby creating a taller car after adding a new sidesill of strip styrene.

Here's one of the three such cars I made...

Accurail later released their nicely-done version of the USRA doublesheathed boxcar.

Here's another TM conversion, starting with the same car you have, based on a photo of a real car...

...from the same car, another increased-height car copying a NYC prototype...

This one is TM's single sheathed car, re-worked a bit....

...and their USRA all-steel car with a few changes...

If you're interested in modifying or upgrading Train Miniature (and other manufacturer's) cars, there's a bunch of such stuff to be found HERE.

Wayne

 

[mikeGTW]

doctorwayne I have a box car the box says Train-Master on it 50 ton A.R.A. outside braced box car Looks identical to the one you posted so had to look at the instructions and they say Train Miniature The price on the box says $2.29

[PC101]

I had a wonderful choice in rolling stock when I started in Model Railroading, Athearn BB, MDC Roundhouse and Train Miniature Inc. That was my pay grade. Grass cutting money. Thanks for the flashback. TMI's are still running on the layout. My favorite back then was the WA&G outside braced 40' boxcar.

[trolleyboy]

SeeYou190

For uncertain reasons I have been building a collection of Train Miniature wooded billboard refrigerated boxcars.

.

I like them, and they look great on their display shelf.

.

Good work of the rehabilitation of this old car.

.

-Kevin

.

 

So your the one that's been up bidding me on feebpay LOL I too have been amassing a collection of the billboard reefers. I loved that they had single and trile packs. Even to day they don't look that out of place with my newer rolling stock sure they don't have rapido detail but with kadee's and metal trucks they do well.

[wjstix]

I started in HO a year or two after Walthers bought the TM line and started producing them as Walthers cars, though I have picked up several original TM cars over the years. They offered a great diversity of steam era cars, 8.5-9' height house cars vs. the later 10' cars more commonly modelled.

dstarr

Some silicone adhesive and some small clamps got the weights stuck down good.

Maybe a bit of overkill on the clamps? I usually just stuck the weights on with some Goo and let it sit for a while.... 

[OldEngineman]

Here are a couple of TM reefers I assembled back in the mid-1970's.

I packed them up in 1978 and they sat in a box for 40 years.

Took them out of the box and put them on the train table. Still running fine.

[BRAKIE]

I never found the use for C clamps for gluing a weight on the floor.. I use Walthers Goo or a super glue since both sets quickly with very little pressure from my fingers.

As far as TM cars,work cars and crane Walthers still sells them under their Main Line brand.