Athearn Passenger Cars - Talgo Trucks

[RicZ]

I have a minimum radius or 25" and have aquired some Athearn Streamlined Passenger cars with talgo trucks.  with this raduis curves can I substitute fixed couplers (Kadees) and eliminate teh talgos?  If so what type should I use?

RicZ

[ATLANTIC CENTRAL]

RicZ

I have a minimum radius or 25" and have aquired some Athearn Streamlined Passenger cars with talgo trucks.  with this raduis curves can I substitute fixed couplers (Kadees) and eliminate teh talgos?  If so what type should I use?

RicZ

Yes you can. Use the longest shank Kadee coupler, #26 or #146, and use the JayBee coupler mounting pads or make your own from plastic.

You can mount them back from the car end to decrease the spacing to a more scale distance and they will still work fine on your curves.

Sheldon

 

[dstarr]

RicZ

I have a minimum radius or 25" and have aquired some Athearn Streamlined Passenger cars with talgo trucks.  with this raduis curves can I substitute fixed couplers (Kadees) and eliminate teh talgos?  If so what type should I use?

RicZ

I run my Athearn passenger cars with the original talgo couplers.  They work well, and handle my 22 inch curves.  They look fine to my eye. 

[BRVRR]

I have Athearn passenger cars with taglo couplers. Heavyweight and streamlined. They all operate on my 22 1/2 and 20 inch radius curves without problems. The key I think is proper weighing. I split the required weight in two and place them inside the car body right above the trucks.

With this arrangement I can back a ten to twelve car consist with out derailments

I have often thought of modifying the cars with body mounted couplers, but why bother? They operate and look okay to my eye the way they are.

[RicZ]

If the talgos are retained, what brand of diaphrams should be used?

RicZ

[ATLANTIC CENTRAL]

Ric,

I use American Limited diaphragms but I do convert to body mounts as explained above.

Sheldon

[gmcrail]

Ric, the Athearn blue box streamlined passenger cars have had, for may years, the well-deserved reputation of being just about the best-tracking passenger cars on the market.  The extra effort of converting them to body-mount is, IMHO, not worth the effort.  I have a string of a half-dozen or so that can track through any of my trackage with no problems, in any direction, push or pull.  Why mess with success?

In response to the diaphragms queston, I second the American Limited suggestion.

[richhotrain]

ATLANTIC CENTRAL

RicZ

I have a minimum radius or 25" and have aquired some Athearn Streamlined Passenger cars with talgo trucks.  with this raduis curves can I substitute fixed couplers (Kadees) and eliminate teh talgos?  If so what type should I use?

RicZ

Yes you can. Use the longest shank Kadee coupler, #26 or #146, and use the JayBee coupler mounting pads or make your own from plastic.

You can mount them back from the car end to decrease the spacing to a more scale distance and they will still work fine on your curves.

Sheldon

 

I agree with Sheldon that the coupler mounting pads from Jay Bee Bennett Enterprises are great, but I haven't seen them available for at least a few years now. 

Does anyone know what is going on with Jay Bee Bennett Enterprises?

For recent conversion projects, I have fashioned coupler mounting pads out of styrene sheet.

Rich

[NP2626]

I have a minimum of 22 inch radius curves and talgo trucks/couplers on my Athearn set of Standard Heavy Weight passenger cars.  I have used American Limited diaphrams on these cars and have had no problems with with the Talgo trucks.  I allow them, because of my tight radius curves; but, have removed Talgo type trucks from everything else.  If I did have a problem with them, I would have changed them out a long time ago.

[ATLANTIC CENTRAL]

The reason I body mount the couplers on Athearn passenger cars is that I carefully remove the cast on "extension" at the door (which is there to simulate a diaphragm) before installing the the American Limited diaphragms. This makes the cars close coupled at a nearly scale distance.

I do the came with Athearn Heavy weight cars and Con Cor 72' streamliners.

Passenger cars look much better when coupled at scale, or near scale distances - and they still go around curves of about 24-26 inch radius - but my curves are much bigger.

Sheldon

[W Rusty]

I was wondering what talgo trucks were.  After reading the above responses, I now know that they are trucks with couplers on the trucks.  I was wondering what benefit would be gained by body mounting the couplers as some model railroaders have suggested that they (require) to run on their layouts.  They only allow body mounted couplers (and have to be Kadee) and use only metal wheelsets.  I have purchased a bulk pack of ¨whisker¨ SF shelf Kadee couplers to replace all my horn hook couplers, but to justify purchasing 100 bulk metal wheel sets will be quite expensive.  If I decide to replace the plastic wheel sets with metal ones, which brand would make more sense to purchase?  I´ve looked at Intermountain, Kadee, Walthers and a few more.  What would you suggest?

W Rusty in eastern Tennessee.

[RR_Mel]

I have two Athearn 72’ streamlined passenger consists (11 cars each) all 22 cars have the original Athearn talgo trucks and Kadee scale shelf couplers.  I went with Athearn metal wheel sets.  I tried other wheel sets but the Athearn wheels worked the best in the Athearn trucks.

 

All of the cars track very well through Atlas 24” radius code 83 flex track at nominal speeds, scale 50 MPH.  They (cars without diaphragms) will negotiate Atlas 18” radius turnouts at reduced speed.  I do add 2 ounces of weight over each truck on all of my rolling stock.  A pair of E7s will easily pull them up my 3½% grades.

 

One set of passenger cars and E7s have American Limited Full Body diaphragms the other doesn’t have diaphragms.  The diaphragms won’t negotiate a radius under 24” without derailing.  I run the passenger cars with diaphragms only on my mainlines with minimum 26” radius.  All of my yard turnouts are Atlas code 83 18” radius.  The cars without diaphragms are easily stored in my yard, the train with diaphragms is stored on a hidden siding off my mainline.

 

 

 

Mel

 

Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951

 

 

My Model Railroad   

http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/

 

Bakersfield, California

 

I'm beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.