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 Posted - August 23 2012 : 02:14:43 AM
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I like to body mount Kadee couplers to my Tyco rolling stock. Having stated that, I've found a vexing problem with the floors of 50 foot boxcars - until recently all of the floors I came across had a "hole" at both ends, exposing the metal weight and providing no real space to drill a hole
for the coupler box. I happily discovered the existence of a Tyco 50 foot floor that has a solid flooring. The "solid" floor is has "Tyco" in the molding and to the right of "Tyco" is the number "1." The flooring with holes at each end has a number "2" to the right of "Tyco." Otherwise the floors are identical, except the solid floor didn't seem to come with an attached weight. The floors are interchangeable. I'm now looking for the solid floors at train shows, etc.
Edited by - detroitterminal on August 23 2012 5:47:48 PM
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Country:  USA ~
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Posted - August 24 2012 : 9:07:07 PM
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The solid-floor chassis is unique to the very first year of 50' boxcar production: 1968. They did not fasten the metal weight to the floor, but sandwiched it between the floor and two long posts in the body shell. Small nubs at the ends of the posts keyed into holes in the weight.
For 1969 onwards, they modified the floor with the retainer clips (necessitating the "holes" in the ends) and eliminated the nubs on the posts... eventually the posts disappeared entirely.
In the early 80's they revised the floor tooling again to accomodate the Electronic Sound of Steam components, and one end of the floor is solid. The other still has the hole and clip, though.
I have not noticed that the number on the floor correlates to either version. They cranked out millions of these, so I am sure duplicate tools were made from the masters and the numbers simply indicated which set stamped a particular piece. Some have the old vs. new Tyco logos, some have "Made in USA" or "Hong Kong" or blanked out... numbers 1 or 2...
Bottom line is, those solid floors are kind of scarce in my experience. Your best bet is to glue some styrene over the hole (on the underside) to give a full, flush mouting surface for your Kadee box. The top of the Kadee box might even work... it would be a styrene-to-styrene bond, and be pretty strong with standard model cement.
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