drgwcsFor some reason a lot of Accurail kits have this issue.
I have and have put together ~80 Accurail kits over the past 15 years. Of those 80, maybe 3 or 4 were warped to the degree of the OPs pictured boxcar shell. I wouldn't exactly call that "a lot".
I think you'll find this more often on very early Accurail kits. Their newer kits are very well contructed and I have seen very little warpage of the shell.
Tom
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
drgwcs Once the underframe is in- it will be OK
This should be true.
I have never had a problem with a kit after it was assembled.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
For some reason a lot of Accurail kits have this issue. Once the underframe is in- it will be OK. Just make sure the glue holding the weight is fully dry. slide it in on the ends then gently take a small flat jewlers scredriver and slide it along the side inbetween it and the underframe. You may need to alternate sides.
I have used bulkheads to fix or prevent problems like this but I find it hard to cut them for a proper fit. Injection molded cars have taper on the inside and resin cars are not always uniform either.
Instead of trying to cut the bulkheads to fit I cut two pieces of styrene about 1/4" wider than 1/2 the desired width. Then I can put them in place and glue and clamp the overlap to get the correct width.
Mark Vinski
I have ten of the E&C woodchips cars that was like that so the load they made for the cars i left it in and stuck the car in bolling water that fixed it now i can run the woodchip cars empty.
Russell
I bought a F&C resin gondola at the white elephant table in Timonium. It was assembled when I bought it and over time it looked exactly like Gary's box car, except it was a gondola. A hair drier allowed me to straighten in out, but it has since assumed it's sagged in shape.Is this a known problem with resin cars?
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
I made uo an insert out of 1/4" styrene, looks like an H but you could do a double H. I set it in the center just where the bowing occured. I braced side to side with the other part just so it was easy to manuver, a kind of handle as I didn't want to glue it without testing position.
dknelson garya dknelson I am not sure exactly why the OP does not want to trust his underframe/floor to do the job, but another possibility is a wad of foam rubber. You do want to preserve the "press fit" after all, unless the floor/underframe is being cemented in place, so having the body bow inwards like this at least slightly is a good thing. Dave Nelson What do you mean, "trust it to do the job?" Where you wrote this: "I usually just work the underframe in, using small screwdrivers or my xacto, but I redid the underframes for these cars and I don't want to manhandle them." Dave Nelson
garya dknelson I am not sure exactly why the OP does not want to trust his underframe/floor to do the job, but another possibility is a wad of foam rubber. You do want to preserve the "press fit" after all, unless the floor/underframe is being cemented in place, so having the body bow inwards like this at least slightly is a good thing. Dave Nelson What do you mean, "trust it to do the job?"
dknelson I am not sure exactly why the OP does not want to trust his underframe/floor to do the job, but another possibility is a wad of foam rubber. You do want to preserve the "press fit" after all, unless the floor/underframe is being cemented in place, so having the body bow inwards like this at least slightly is a good thing. Dave Nelson
I am not sure exactly why the OP does not want to trust his underframe/floor to do the job, but another possibility is a wad of foam rubber. You do want to preserve the "press fit" after all, unless the floor/underframe is being cemented in place, so having the body bow inwards like this at least slightly is a good thing.
Dave Nelson
What do you mean, "trust it to do the job?"
I don't want to crush or break the details, or the stirrups. I replaced the fishbelly with 1/8" evergreen channel, and installed simplified K brakes, brake levers, and brake rods made out of .012 wire, and I didn't want to smash them up trying to fight the underframe in.
Not sure why I bother--you can barely see it under the car when they're on the layout.
Gary
dknelson...the underframe snapped out readily enough and now I can't get it to stay back in. Pick up the car and the underframe drops out!.
Whenever I have a car with that problem (sometimes because of the amount of weight I added), I simply cement short lengths of Evergreen .125"x.125" strip styrene to the inside of the car's body, near the ends, and at a position which, when the underbody is inserted, will put it at the correct height.Once the joints have hardened, the floor in inserted and drilled through the floor and also through the strips, using a bit sized for either 2-56 or 1-72 tap.
The floor is then removed, and the holes in it re-drilled to an appropriate clearance value. I then use a larger bit, in a pin vise, to create countersinks for the flathead screws that I plan to use, and also tap the holes in the cemented-in strips.
While this operation isn't accomplished in a few minutes, it's well-worth the effort if an underbody, which you've gone to some lengths to detail, drops out as you remove the car from the layout (or its box), and when it hits the floor, breaks off a coupler, or damages the trucks or the added detail.
That's when you'll appreciate the effort you put in to correcting that situation.
I have a number of such cars and a photo of at least one, which shows the modification, but photobucket is not allowing me access to it at this time.
Wayne
doctorwayne A piece of .060" sheet styrene, cut to match the width of the car's floor, and just tall enough to fit when the floor's in place would do the trick easily. Slide it in at about the mid-point of the car's doors, add some solvent-type cement using a suitably-sized paint brush, and you're done. You could mass produce a dozen of these in a couple of minutes. I've had a few Accurail cars with that problem, and have also detailed the underframes, but I simply insert and hold the underframe into one end of the car, and as I push down on the opposite end of the underframe, it spreads the car's sides apart appropriately. Wayne
A piece of .060" sheet styrene, cut to match the width of the car's floor, and just tall enough to fit when the floor's in place would do the trick easily. Slide it in at about the mid-point of the car's doors, add some solvent-type cement using a suitably-sized paint brush, and you're done. You could mass produce a dozen of these in a couple of minutes.
I've had a few Accurail cars with that problem, and have also detailed the underframes, but I simply insert and hold the underframe into one end of the car, and as I push down on the opposite end of the underframe, it spreads the car's sides apart appropriately.
If styrene is as wide as the floor, it will be too big--there is a ledge for the underframe. It needs to be a bit narrower, about a 1/16"
I tried it with some scrap styrene last night, and it helped to get the underframes in. I made my pieces 1-1/16" and found I didn't even have to glue them in--friction held them in place.
Just pressing hasn't worked for me, but the next one with a plain underframe I'll try it and see how it goes.
Same issue with Accurail but once the underframe is in place the problem is taken care of. Oddly enough I was just modifying an AccuReady car (one of the RTR models) and had the opposite problem - the underframe snapped out readily enough and now I can't get it to stay back in. Pick up the car and the underframe drops out! The shell of the boxcar does NOT bow in, in other words. I finally resorted to tiny amounts of that temporary adhesive often used to make figures stay in place. I didn't want to permanently cement the underframe/floor in place in case there are future modifications I want to make to the car.
doctorwayne I've had a few Accurail cars with that problem, and have also detailed the underframes, but I simply insert and hold the underframe into one end of the car, and as I push down on the opposite end of the underframe, it spreads the car's sides apart appropriately. Wayne
Most of the time that's exactly the same method I use to get a warped underframe to fit onto a shell, Wayne. One shell, however, was so badly warped that the underframe kept popping out. After some persistence and some outward muscling of the shell, I was able to get it to stay on.
I like the idea of the styrene insert. And I might even put another insert further up inside the shell if the warping goes all the way to the top of the shell. Otherwise, the bottom of the shell will look square but gradually taper inward when viewed from the end.
No experience with Accurail kits, but I have had this happen with Westerfield and Funaro and Camerlongo "One Piece Body" resin kits.
I use 1/4" square plastic box beam from either Evergreen or Plastruct. Cut it to length and glue it into the center of the car.
Done and good.
How about just leaving the wood block in place?
You could also put in three or four .060" or .080" styrene cross braces that go floor to ceiling. The fit would be more precise.
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
Gary,
I've had that issue on a few Accurail kits over the years. Not many though.
Could you cut a piece of 2 by the width and 90% of the length of the shell - i.e. if the sides were flat and not bowed in - slide it into the opening and try the hairdryer trick again? I would also make sure to let the shell cool completely before removing the wood block.
All right, this is starting to bug me...
I have many Accurail cars, and I've had several boxcars and reefers that suffer from the squeeze--the body is bowed in:
I usually just work the underframe in, using small screwdrivers or my xacto, but I redid the underframes for these cars and I don't want to manhandle them. I tried warming the body with my daughter's haridryer, but it didn't really help. How do you get around this problem?