Bachmann Passenger Cars


diburning

diburning

AlcoHaulic
I recently bought a few Bachmann passenger cars and I have a few questions for those who own them.

I bought a Bachmann Silver Series full dome car. The car has body mounted couplers, but it's a lie. The coupler pockets are hooked up to a lever system that is hooked up to the truck bolster. When the truck swivels, it pulls a lever that rotates the coupler pocket in the same direction. The truck and the coupler swivels on different planes so it's not the same as a truck mounted coupler.

Has anyone had any problems with this system? Should I disconnect the lever so that the coupler pocket is not linked to the truck? The coupler pocket would then spin around with no way to center it so I'd rather not do that without finding a way to center the pocket. I'm not sure what radius the curves at the club are (I think 22 or 24 but I could be wrong) so I'd rather not glue the pocket down either.



I also bought 2 (2 more coming) Bachmann Silver Series Amfleet cars. These are the newer ones with LED interior lighting and LED marker lights. I disassembled one and can't make heads or tails of the circuits that hook the pickups to the LEDs. I want to isolate them to wire in a lighting function decoder so that I can control the directionality of the marker lights as well as the ability to turn the interior lights on and off. Has anyone attempted this before?
 
The problem with the Spectrum heavyweight passenger cars is well known in the model railroad world. The system of coupling isn't the best, but it actually works reasonably well IF the couplers, themselves, are replaced and shimmed as needed so that they all hang comfortably, and pivot reliably, so that they meet each other at elevation above the tracks.

This was my experience. I had to purchase some over-shank couplers from Kadee so that the couplers would meet each other as they hung naturally, and only in two cases.
 
Hmm, my Amfleets have the correct coupler height with #5s, I haven't checked the dome car yet, but I did put #148s in it since the coupler pockets looked identical to Silver Series freight cars (which have a large center post that will not accept a brass centering spring)

All of the cars are Silver Series, and not Spectrum. A fellow club member has Spectrum heavyweights and they appear to be total junk. The cars I have seem to be much better than the Spectrums.

EDIT: I've checked the coupler height. The couplers don't droop and they are at the correct height as measured with the Kadee height gauge.
 
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Eric;

My club's experience with these cars has been interesting to say the least. The couplers on one member's Spectrum heavyweights started to droop very badly, and he wound up and had to cut out the swivel mechanism and body mount the couplers.

I would have to say that the swivel mechanism is the weakest part of those cars.
 
How tight of a radius can his cars take after the coupler pockets became body mounted?

If it's the same system as on my dome car (which I'm beginning to think it is) then I foresee plenty of problems down the road (a fellow club member has spectrum heavyweights and they derail and/or uncouple everywhere)

At least the dome car is properly weighted to NMRA specs.

The interior lighting uses 12 volt bulbs. I'll have to change those out to surface mount LEDs. The layout uses a standard 14 volts since it's DCC, and some sections are 16 volts (the boosters are set that high due to the proximity to yards where multiple sound engines idle)
 
Eric,

They will run on my layout, and I have a 29" minimum radius on my layout. The club has a 40" minimum.

I'm not sure what the minimum radius would be. But on a friends layout who has several 24" radius, my heavyweights, which are a mixture of Rivarossi, old Walther's kits and a Branchline kit, had no trouble, and the couplers are all BD mounted. Now on that tight of radius, (24), they look crappy, but they run around it.
 
I'm not sure what radius the curves are at the club. I think I'll leave the couplers as they are now until they break or droop, then I'll body mount them and hope for the best.

I hope that those 12 volt bulbs don't burn out the car first.... The track voltage in some areas with yards is 16 volts. I've had a Kato melt its shell before because it had a 12 volt bulb that ran too hot.
 
diburning said:
How tight of a radius can his cars take after the coupler pockets became body mounted?

If it's the same system as on my dome car (which I'm beginning to think it is) then I foresee plenty of problems down the road (a fellow club member has spectrum heavyweights and they derail and/or uncouple everywhere)

At least the dome car is properly weighted to NMRA specs.
Click to expand...

Bachmann's Spectrum HW cars were designed to operate on 18" radius curves out of the box. I have experimented with disconnecting the linkage from the trucks, with mixed results, and have also used Jay-Bee's spacers and Kadee pockets to fully body mount the couplers, without droop. The tightest curve I have used them on is a 24" radius reverse loop.

Replacing the Kadee # 5 with the # 146 wisker with a slightly longer shank, allows for smoother operation on tighter than desired curves.
 
The full dome car is not a Spectrum heavyweight. Regarding your dome cars, with the lever coupler system; I wouldn't necessarily disconnect them. They are 85' cars, which if you use tight curves (anything under about 26") you may have problems with the cars either hitting adjacent cars on curves and/or derailing them due to the coupler's displacement from the curve centerline, on curves. They came up with the lever system to address the overhang, due to the length of the cars. I can't speak to which Kadee coupler to use, as I don't actually own one.

My Amfleet cars are from the 80's-your idea of being able to turn on and off the marker lights sounds prototypical. Good luck, & let us know about your success.
 
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