Hoppers hopper everywhere

Central portion of these cars can be filled with sand.

A bit challenging to see in the photo but the outer discharge bays are only filled to the top of the bay, any higher and the sand will spill out the openings on the ends.  I tried heaping the sand on the inside of the bay but this didn't work out very well.  As soon as the car was moved or jostled sand spilled out the ends. 

With care you can even add sand and glue to cars with small hatches, you just need to take a bit more care in application of sand and glue. 

Hopefully these cars will be more reliable now that they are up to a decent weight.  More testing required on that front. 

Centre of Gravity?

Dear ???

With the centre bays filled "to the brim", how's the centre-of-gravity and associated pitch/roll of the cars affected?

Are they "sitting-down (flat) on the rails"
or "sitting cant'd-over" against any slight truck bolster or trackwork imperfection?

I'm about to start weighting a fleet of kit tankcars and a few Accurail hoppers,
so this is weighing on my mind some... (pun not intended, but apologised for anyway...)

Happy Modelling,
Aim to Improve,
Prof Klyzlr

So your cars are what 8 to 9

So your cars are what 8 to 9 inches long? Standard recommended weight would put them at 5 to 5.5 oz and your 7.4 would get them to about 2.5 or 3oz over the weight recommended. Just a little over what I use but the lead shot would put the weight down much lower in the shell. Surprising that it took so much sand to get the weight to where you wanted it, I thought when looking at your first photo they would be much heavier.

How do you like the way they run.

weight distribution

Prof, my thoughts were that the center of gravity might be a tad high, will see what the cars do on the track. 

Rob, the cars scale out just shy of 8".  The sand was less dense than I was expecting, I thought I could get 8 ounces into the cars but not the case.  Because the cars were built before I purchased them I wanted to get weight that was easy to load and glue in place without disassembly. 

My prototype had generally poor track conditions, and these types of cars were not used until the late 1990's as they sometimes rocked themselves off the track.  The line to the port of Churchill was the last holdout of 40 foot boxcars in grain service in Canada.  Maybe the models will replicate the prototype and rock themselves off the track.  Stay tuned.

Marc Simpson

For those thinking of weighting similar cars

I will suggest that you wait a week for the next issue of MRH magazine for a new idea on what to use to weight them in an article on "Prepping Cars for Operation".  (Hint, a way to add more weight then in the above thread, without removing a single piece to open it up).

I have found the problem with

I have found the problem with buying second hand cars built from kits: you are at the mercy of the skills and abilities of whomever built the kit.  In one case the bottom of the car was not fully seated before being glued in place, leaving the couplers well above the correct height relative to the coupler gauge. 

A whole bunch of filing and cutting later and I have the car so that the couplers, while still a tad high are able to stay coupled to the cars around them.  Actually it is probably not much different from some of the work required on some "RTR" cars before they'll operate without issues.  At least I only paid a few bucks for the cars so I'm more forgiving than when I have to work on a $50 car to get it to stay on the track. 

For Prof, the cars are operating well with no issues as to center of gravity or such.  They couple together with a satisfying THUNK! and do't exhibit any wobble or leaning when running.  The biggest issues I have are with the Intermountain multipart trucks, they are pretty much junk.  Replace them with 1 piece trucks and you are good to go.

James, interesting article in the September issue with some good suggestions.  I was going for the thrifty option instead of the more expensive weights that you can purchase.  Maybe I'll see if I can get some heavy mineral sand for future car weighting...

Marc Simpson