We have all seen them - Bachmann's Heavy duty flatcar was sold in almost every one of their larger sets sporting stakes and Logs.  They come in either red L&N livery or blue Great Northern livery.  Now, before you scoff at the car, hold it up next to a Bluebox Athearn Heavy Duty flat and you may notice they are very very similar to each other.  Very similar indeed!

I've always liked the general look and feel of this car, but dagnabbit if it would EVER stay on the rails!!  This car was always eage to jump off the tracks at the first straight section, which was only slightly worse than the caboose - it generally survived until you hit the curves!

The only difference between these cars, truly, is the four truck/8 axle setup under the Athearn car. Otherwise, they're the same general prototype.  The slick part about the Bachmann car is that it comes on two 3-axle trucks, hence it's a completely different class of car versus an Athearn car, as built, so it's valuable for expanding the overall fleet.

Now you might ask why we might use this Bachmann car when we could just go ahead and use the Athearn car.  First of all, whether you use the Athearn car or the Bachmann car, you still have to body mount the couplers: the Athearn couplers are mounted on the tongues of the bolster spanners.  Second, the Bachmann car is one of the easier cars to find, and at a great price, anywhere between $1 and $3.  Athearn cars are out there, but as time goes by, well, they're not junk like the Bachmann is as it comes in the box, and they're going to be more along the lines of $5-$10!

The first thing we have to do here is body mount the couplers.  I used Kadee coupler boxes and No5 couplers.  It's quick work, to say the least. 

We then place the car on a piece of track with a Kadee coupler height gauge:

Yeowch!!  I think it should be obvious now WHY this car derails and so often!!  The weight of the car is quite literally 1.67 ounces, and to make matters worse, the car is riding far too high.  I should add these Bachmann trucks were never the most free wheeling, either, resembling friction sleds if anything, so it should be no surprise why this car fails.

The Bachmann trucks are all and well, perhaps, but I have a pile of Athearn Buckeye trucks that I picked up when the sales were good.  A set of them and 6 Intermountain wheel sets brings the weight up to 2.36 ounces, most of this in the wheel sets.

Here's what it looks like with the Athearn trucks; this is before cutting down the bolster.:

I then removed about 1/8th of an inch of material from the bolster, very carefully, with a knife.  I then used two pieces of Evergreen styrene tubing: one tube with an outer diameter large enough to fit into the socket under the car, and the second tube with an inner diameter small enough to accept a 2-56 screw, and the two tubes telescoping within each other.  This brought both the coupler height and the ride height of the flatcar deck down to the the appropriate level.

I then ran the car around the layout on my inaugural run. 

How did it run?  Let's just say, after half an hour, it was still on the track!  that's with no added weight, beyond the addition of metal wheel sets, and that's at the end of this train was a rather heavy boxcar and a caboose!

It will be painted, sooner or later, once I get around to that art...

So if you find one, you have the parts and you're willing to put in the work, it's a rather good car!