# Rebuilding a Tyco coal car



## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

I've been discussion my rebuild project and getting great ideas from folks in various threads, so I thought it was time to show a bit of my progress. I don't have any cars "done" yet, but I think I have my technique down now to finish them off the way I had imagined.

To begin with, an overnight soak in brake fluid, followed by a careful hosing with brake cleaner (too much and the plastic starts to get soft). The I clip off and clean up all the stirrups, open ladder rungs (I keep the ones molded on the body to simply the rebuild), and the other bars. I finish by using a dremel, files, and razor blade to remove the original side-mounted brake box.









Next I add the drop-sides and top lip to the ends of the car. I snip out the interior bracing which is just a solid triangular piece, and add cross-braces. I also use some plastic filer putty to smooth the molding voids left inside the hopper.


















I also added details for the vertical brake staff. The bottom part where the chain is wound gave me a headache, but working with copper wire provided a solution. However this one kept getting knocked loose easily.









What I finally settled on for the bottom of the brake shaft is using 24ga copper wire, laying a 3/8" wide steel bar across it and giving it a tap with a hammer. This left a flat section in the wire. I drilled a #75 hole in the center of the flat area, then bent up the sides and snipped off the ends, leaving about 1/8" of the round wire on each leg. Then I drilled another pair of #75 holes into the body of the car, and glued the piece in place. This has been very solid, and never came loose while I finished the rest of the work. This shot also shows the detail of the small piece that holds the top of the brake staff. I basically snipped off a triangular piece of .020 thick plastic, sized it up with a file and glued it in place, then finished shaping with a file.









By this point I've also finished up drilled and gluing the new ladder rungs, stirrups, and other rails, however there's one piece remaining -- the side-mounted wheels for dumping the loads. This was my original attempt... after three tries, this was the best position I could find to place them in, but I still wasn't happy with it. (By the way, this is the first car I started working on, and have been playing with my weathering techniques on)









After spending some time looking at old wooden hoppers, I finally came up with a new plan. The old cars didn't always have perfectly-spaced ribs along the sides, and I needed something that fit better with the placement of the dump-wheels. After taking a deep breath, I completely cut out the center three ribs, and replaced them with two new ribs with a wider spacing. The position of the dump-wheels was chosen to be centered to the actually clamshell gates under the hopper, corresponding to the obvious center of each bay from the top side, and directly under the cross-bracing.


















Although this took a lot more work, I'm really happy with the results. I didn't notice at first, but the new spacing is actually almost identical to that of the end sections, so it doesn't look out of place at all. I also lowered the centerline of the dump wheels about 1/16" and added a mounting plate behind them.

There is still one detail missing from all this -- replacing the rivets. There are dry-transfer types I've seen, but they can get expensive fast. Yesterday I happened upon a technique that is so simple I don't know why I hadn't thought of it myself. Using some .010" thick styrene (which is what I'm using for the wide part of the replaced ribs anyway), use something sharp like a dental pic to push out your rivets from the back side. The pic turned out to be too sharp though, so I'm experimenting with leather needles, or maybe a filed sewing needle. But this technique works great, and if you look close at the last picture you might be able to see the new rivets in the four corners of the plates behind the dump wheels. I also experimented with the .010 x .080 styrene I use for the ribs, and placing a rivet every 1/8" seems to match the originals on the car. I can't wait to start on the next car so I can apply this technique to the ribs and drop-bottom.

So that's about it for now. I actually have a couple more cars soaking in brake fluid tonight, and I need to get some fine chain for the brake stem and the dump wheels. I've also been playing with rare-earth magnets glued to the clamshell doors so I can drop the load remotely and not use a special track section (it interferes with the kadee couplers anyway), but I'd like to add in the first leg of visible brake linkage under the car also. Anyway, the next step will be hitting the entire car with a flat-black spray paint, then I can start figuring out how I want to do my lettering.


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## flyboy2610 (Jan 20, 2010)

That is very well done!:smilie_daumenpos::smilie_daumenpos:


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## DonR (Oct 18, 2012)

Tyco had no idea that their product could ever look so good.

And, then, feel the pleasure of a job well done.

Don


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## dave1905 (Jul 7, 2013)

If you are really intense, you can shave individual rivets off an old shell and glue them on one by one. 

Or for a real low impact just use a pint to make a divet in the plastic. From 3 feet away you see the mark and don't neccesarily notice whether the dimple is in or out.


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

Thanks! This is my first attempt at doing anything like this, so I've made mistakes. You can see the line on the first car (the one with the weathering) where I glued on the drop-bottom because I didn't get it flush to the outside of the car, but I fixed that in the second one. I still need to change the ribs on the other side of the second car, then when we get warm weather again I'll hit it with a coat of flat-black paint and see if I got everything lined up as well as I think I did.


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

dave -- I've seen that technique, and no way am I that patient!  I'm not trying to build one show-piece car, I'm actually building a fleet with this change, thus trying to keep the changes as simple as possible but still make them look obviously different and nicer. My goal is to end up with about 20 of these cars, and the way things are going I may have the cars done before I ever get started laying track.

I'm not sure what you mean by using a 'pint' to make a divet? Is that another sort of tool?


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## dave1905 (Jul 7, 2013)

Here are some hoppers I made from Varney/Life Like hopper/covered hopper carcasses.

The 2 P&R cars are variations of the almost stock cars. They have the safety appliances (grap irons) revised to make them 1900 era. The P&R is near stock, to represent a Pressed Steel Car Co car, while the P&R 81013 has the ribs replaced with alternating channels and angles to represent a Standard Steel Car Col. Car. these are predecessors to the USRA twin hopper.









This B&O car represents an 1890's model, I cut about 3-4 feet out of the middle of a "USRA" twin hopper and covered it with scribed siding to represent a B&O 30 ft hopper.




















The following two pictures are detail shots of the W&CR hopper, I sanded of the ribs and covered it with scribed siding and added wood ribs to make a generic 1890's wood hopper.


















This is a second attempt. Instead of an overlay I filled in the side openings and then scribed the sides to look like a wood hopper with steel side posts. Both the P&R and the LV used those types of cars.


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

Cool, I hadn't thought about trying to do actual wooden hoppers, but they would certainly fit into my era. I really like how that turned out by scribing the sides, I may have to try that on one car. The N&W hoppers that I'm basing my design on actually started out as wooden hoppers, then I believe after WW1 they refitted the frames with steel sides, so it probably wouldn't be out of the question to see the same car in wood.

How do you find details for the undersides of the cars? Or do you just generalize some details based on other cars? With the lowered center of my cars not a lot of detail would actually show, but I'm having trouble really finding anything at all on the mechanical linkage used with the stem-winder brakes.


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

I rebuilt the ribs on the back side of the car today, including the strips with the rivets, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Thing I'll go ahead and remove the new ribs on the front side and lay down some new ones with the rivets. Still poking holes, need to use a little less pressure.


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## dave1905 (Jul 7, 2013)

Shdwdrgn said:


> How do you find details for the undersides of the cars?


I started with hopper cars, you started with a covered hopper, so I was able to use the existing slope sheets, etc. 

I use Grandt Line O Scale queen posts, Tichy turnbuckles and brass rod for the truss rods.

I got a copy of White's history of freight cars plus have Kareig's histonry of coal cars, plus other books with plans for turn of the century cars. 



> Or do you just generalize some details based on other cars?


Often yes.



> With the lowered center of my cars not a lot of detail would actually show, but I'm having trouble really finding anything at all on the mechanical linkage used with the stem-winder brakes.


The only thing that is different is that on a power brake the the brake wheel winds a chain that pulls a rod up, the rod is attached to a fulcrum that changes it to pulling a rod under the car, that works on the brake rigging. On a vertical staff brake the brake wheel turns a rod, which winds a chain around the rod, that pulls a rod under the car, that works on the brake rigging. Everything past the rod is the same regardless of the type of brake staff/wheel. The Tichy AB or split K brake kit has all the parts for both types of brake.

Good job on the rivets by the way.


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

Oh yes, I also changed the center portion of the ribs from an .030 x .030 strip to an .020 x .030, so now it is exactly the same size as the original ribs.

I'll have to look into those Tichy brake kits, thanks for the info!


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## Aminnich (Nov 17, 2014)

Wow that is quite the make over for that coal car!! Looks really good. 

How many of these cars do you now have and did you get them all from shows??


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

I got a handful from shows, the bulk came from ebay and/or online sales from groups like this. There are 14 known print varieties of the Tyco/Mantua hoppers, and I have 11 of them. For my rebuild pile, I have around 15 complete cars that will be getting the above treatment.


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## Aminnich (Nov 17, 2014)

Right now I have a bunch of hoppers I have been getting at shows, sure I could still use that for loads that won't get u loaded, but have you ever seen normal hopper cars modified to work on the tyco unloading platform??


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

That would take a lot of work, I doubt it would be worth the effort. If you wanted to modify regular hoppers, I would say stick with the idea of magnetics, cut out the hopper doors and replace them with a thin hinged piece of plastic that has a magnet embedded in it, so you can use an electromagnet to pull the doors open against the spring. There's just such a huge difference between the bottom of a regular hopper and the tyco unloaders that I don't see it possible to do what you ask.


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## Aminnich (Nov 17, 2014)

So if I did the magnet idea then I wouldn't need the tyco unloader. That's seems like a good idea.


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

Assuming it works.  I've never tried it myself, but surely *someone* on the internet has?


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## Aminnich (Nov 17, 2014)

I mean I'm sure I could figure something out. I mean I know how to do simple circuits so I might try it out.


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

I wasn't sure if the spray would be fine enough, but I decided to go for broke, and sprayed the car in flat-black today. This is the same dirt-cheap, dollar-a-can paint that I've been using out in the yard, but the results were pretty good. I'm trying not to handle the car much tonight, give the paint a day to dry, but I snapped some pics. Focus is getting really hard now, I guess flat-black doesn't play well with cameras. 

Anyway, last night I finished rebuilding the ribs on both sides of the car, including the rivets. I also used some thick superglue to lay down a row of rivets along the bottom edge. Those aren't very consistent in spacing or size, but they work well enough to at least appear as details unless you have really sharp eyes.









The whole thing came out a rather sooty black, which makes a great base for an old coal car. I guess if I want to make a car that looks slightly newer, I'll try using a satin black. I also hit the metal base with the flat black, but it just occurred to me that I should have drilled the holes for the kadee coupler pockets first. Ah well, I'll just give it another coat after the holes are drilled, there's no fine details in the base that I could cover up.


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

After sitting overnight, I took a closer look at the car this morning. Regular spray paint definitely does not go on in a fine mist. Overall the car has a curious gritty texture, and as you turn it around there are certain particles that reflect the light. Overall, I would say this is a wonderful approximation of a surface that has been covered by layers of coal dust, and I may have to use this to cover areas around my coal loading and unloading stops.

For the car itself, however, I think it's a bit much. Tonight Ill try rubbing it down lightly with a wet cloth and see if that smooths it out a bit. I may leave some of the texture just under the top rails, and the underside of the car which will be covered in a rust color will look great if it retains the grit.


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

I did some initial brush work on the car and finished adding the coupler boxes and trucks to the base. The biggest thing holding me back right now is finding some appropriate D&RGW decals. I have a generic set of dry-rub roman letters, but at $4 a sheet and the set only having a single W in each size, I couldn't justify the price. I've run across a few D&RGW sets on ebay, but most have photos taken from a ridiculous distance where even if the letters weren't white, you still wouldn't be able to see what actually comes on the sheet. And I'm trying to find a set that includes the hopper data. From what I can tell, it seems that in the very early part of the century they did not have the Rio Grande logos, but just a simple lettering of D&RGW and very little data, so actually labeling the cars should be pretty straightforward. (Please correct me if anyone has more appropriate information.)

So as I was saying, I have some initial rusting brushed on, and dirtied up the undercarriage. The orange on the trucks isn't nearly as neon as it appears, however in order to get good light for the pictures I had to move my setup outside so it really made the orange pop out in the photo. I figured out a good technique for getting a nice mottled rusty look -- 1 part burnt sienna, 1 part burnt orange, and 2 parts water -- brush in on to completely cover the surface, let it sit about 20 seconds to start drying, then pat it down with a kleenex. Most of the paint comes off and it leaves a wonderfully random pattern or brighter and darker spots. For the trucks, I just did a light coat of some earth brown, then dry-brushed some orange highlights.



















Once I can locate some decals and get them on the car, I can do a white-wash to smear the lettering some, and then add a wash of dirt across the sides and more rusting down the ribs.

Oh yeah, and I was experimenting with painting some code-83 track. I'll actually be using 70 for my layout though. I hit the whole thing with some dark camo brown, then ran a wood block across the top of the rail to clean the paint before it dried. The colored ties are earth brown with highlights of raw sienna, and thunder grey. I also painted the back rail with the earth brown and think it turned out better that way, so I'll probably find a spray paint in that color and paint the rails separate from the ties.


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## rrgrassi (May 3, 2012)

Have you tried the Micro Scale Decals? Oh, good work on the Tyco car! I still have all of my Tyco stuff from childhood. The only alterations I am doing is wheel sets and body mount couplers. I love billboard advertising cars!


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

I've been slowly working on six more of these coal cars. Cleaning up various broken cars and getting the new sides made. The white one is the first of a new technique for these that looks promising. Since I figured out how to make rivets in the .010" this material, and the body of the cars happens to be .050" thick, I'm using standard .040" plastiv to glue on the initial side, then making my rivets in an .010" piece to finish up both the detail and the thickness. It came out pretty well, then I laid down the two new ribs on each side. Once I have that finished on all six cars, the last time-consuming step will be cutting out the plastic ladder rungs and drilling holes for the wire. The I finish up with the new cross-braces inside the hopper, and add the dump wheels and vertical brake staff.



















The cast metal bottoms are pretty simple.. I cut out the newer-style brake system and drill/tap holes for the kadee couplers. The kadee 551 metal trucks perfectly replace the original plastic pieces. Give everything a quick shot of flat-black paint, then I can start working on decals.


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## Aminnich (Nov 17, 2014)

Still looking good!!! 

I keep thinking of you and your rebuilds when i went to the last 2 train show I meant to. now that i know what im looking for, I have seen a lot of the tyco coal cars with the self unloading.


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

Yeah I get a few here and there. I still snag them up on ebay when I see a good price one on, in fact one of the cars pictured was just such a recent find. This car arrived with a black paint job already, but as I started cutting down the pieces I don't need, it looked like a light blue color underneath (which would be the Monon car). More scraping revealing the car is actually a milky transparent, which means it was actually the Holly or Spreckles sugar cars. What initially worried me was I discovered some decals that were painted over, and with carefully scraping I discovered the Reading Railroad name (which is actually one of the rare cars), but after a quick comparison I realized someone had tried to make their own Reading line and then painted over it. The point of all this is that it was actually quite interesting scraping through the layers to see what this car would reveal to me about its history, a story that could only be uncovered through careful work. Probably not quite as exciting as a similar process with a real car, but that was my little touch of archeology. 

Anyway, back to the train shows... Sometimes you find amazing deals -- I picked up a C&O in an original Tyco red box a few weeks ago for $12, and the wear on the wheels indicates this car has barely been out of the box. And then you find people who think that old automatically means expensive, and have way too high a price tag on the most common of cars. For these operating hoppers, around $6 is what I consider a fair price at the train shows. However I also have a separate pile for my collection, attempting to get examples of every version of this car made. There are twelve road names, and some have variations on the way they were printed over the years. Surprisingly I have all of the known variations, but I'm still missing one car, and another car is missing its top cover. Maybe this Summer I'll have a chance to build a display case for them and get them all cleaned up.


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## Aminnich (Nov 17, 2014)

Most of the time when I find them, they are Virginia hoppers. 

One of the shows I saw the actual tyco set with the track and trestle unloading area for $5. The guy also had 7 Virginia hopper cars for it. He was asking $25 for the whole thing. It seemed like a pretty good deal, but I didnt get it.


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

Damn, yeah I would have snagged that up. I have no use for the trestle set and the special track piece, but would have loved to grab a deal like that just for the cars. The Virginia is by far the most common name ever made in these cars, so almost everything that I'm rebuild is starting with those cars.


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## Aminnich (Nov 17, 2014)

Well i'd be more than willing to pick them up for you, if you need more. I have been seeing them pop up quite often for a decent price.


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

@Aminnich -- Yeah if you happen to see another batch like that, I think I'm going to want a few more for my fleet. Let's say 8 more at most for around $30, and I'll pay you shipping to send them this way. I appreciate the offer!

I got in some more decals today and realized I still haven't really settled on exactly how I want to lay out the various pieces. I was somewhat disappointed to find there were no existing technical drawings of these cars, so I decided to make my own. There's no exact scale to these drawings, but it works out to almost exactly 145 pixels per inch. I basically took a clean picture of the side of one of my cars and drew the outline over it. I went ahead and made up images for both the original and modified cars, so in case anyone ever needs them in the future (or wants a pattern to follow my changes), I thought I would post them up for prosperity. Enjoy...


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

I've been reading up on the various pieces of data that are supposed to be put on cars, and checking through photos it seems like in the early 1900's there wasn't a lot of regulation. I suppose the railroads just put whatever data was useful to *them* and didn't worry about interchange. Also there doesn't seem to be a lot of consistency to where the data was placed, as long as it was in a similar location for each type of car?

So I took my design and applied data based on where it looked like it would fit best, and with what pieces are available in the woodland scenics boxcar data set. Note the data at the bottom center is a tight fit (and the actual decals are just slightly smaller than my image), however I reasoned that the railroad would not want to put any data beneath the dump wheels because it would get scraped off over time by the chains hanging under the wheels. The load weights are a theoretical reduction based on this being a very early steel design (I read somewhere that early hoppers would only carry around 60 tons?), and the cubic feet value is what was printed on the original Tyco Virginian hoppers.

So my question to those who are more knowledgeable in the subject than I... Is there any critical data I am missing that absolutely WOULD have been included on a hopper around 1905? For that matter, have I included anything here that would not have been present around that time period? I realize my hopper is mostly fictional, but I'd still like to try and keep some details accurate.










[EDIT] More research and some minor changes. First, capacities were 50-55 tons, meaning 100-110 thousand pounds. I completely messed that up before. Second, I'm having trouble find car numbers for that time period, however I've found some good info on the narrow gauge cars, and it looks like the 6000-series I had before is actually used by flat cars. Gondolas were in the 1000's, and boxcars started in the 3000's, so I'll take a wild guess and number my hoppers in the 2000's? There is some info I found labeling cars with 5-digit numbers, so I'm not sure if that was always used for standard gauge cars, or if they were simply renumbered as railroad standardization occurred in the 20's and 30's? One last thing, I added "HM" which was the AAR code for a 30' fishbelly hopper.

Yeah, there's a LOT of guess-work here, but I think I've done pretty good on the basic required data, and I do like the layout. I was thinking about also adding the original D&RG herald, but I haven't found that actually used much on freight cars, so I'll just keep it like this.


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