Piggyback freight car.

[Anonymous]

I am trying to find a piggyback flat car like the one in the picture in the 2004 walthers reference book pg 171 under the container crain it is a piggy back car that is designed just for trailers. ( It is not a flat car) it shares a truck and I think it comes in a 3 pack or 5 pack

Thanks for the help
Irvin

[Anonymous]

You're either talking about the Walthers Multi-Purpose Spine Car or the Athearn Impack car - Does it say whether it can take both containers and trailers? If so, it's the Walthers version. The Athearn Impack can only carry 40ft trailers, the Walthers Spine Car can handle both 48ft trailers and 48ft containers. Unfortunately, I think they're both out of production at the moment - you may be lucky and find old stock in a hobby store (as I did) Judging by the Walthers website it looks as if there may be a new production run of the Impack cars in 2004. If it is the Impack you will need one pack of "Impack inter" and one pack of "Impack end" cars - the end cars are the ones with the couplers, the "Inter" cars run between them to form a 5-unit articulated set sharing trucks. The Walthers spine cars are a complete 5-unit set.

As far as couplers are concerned, for the Walthers spine car you will need a pair of Kadee #44s or #47s - these fit into the cast-on draft gear boxes perfectly. For the Athearn Impack Kadee recommend the #22, however, I used #5s with no trouble at all - they just dropped into the draft gear boxes with no modification required.

My Impacks needed a small drop of glue to hold them together properly - the screws that Athearn provide are not quite enough. you might need to glue the ends of the baseplates to prevent them distorting downwards and rubbing on the axles. It should be fairly obvious how to do this when you read the instructions. With both cars it is important to make sure that the plastic pivots that join the individual parts of the car together are properly seated in the car body - otherwise your trailers/containers will not sit level, there will be height differences, and other problems. I also found that the Walthers trailer hitches needed a bit of modification to make the trailer sit level in relation to the car body - carefully reducing the height of the upright part of the hitch assembly with a file while checking constantly to make sure you've not taken too much off is the way forward here.

Hope this helps, as you may have guessed intermodal cars are one of my particular interests!

[SSW9389]

Actually the Athearn Impack car maxes out with a 45' trailer.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by SSW9389

Actually the Athearn Impack car maxes out with a 45' trailer.

I stand corrected. Must remember that when I finally get round to buying some trailers for my Impack!