Whalebelly Tank Car

 Things were looking unusually quiet today along South Industrial Blvd. on the JSSX...

No boxcars at the warehouse, and nothing happening on the street either.  So, with not much going on there, I went to the storage cupboard and found myself a quick railcar upgrade project to do.

This Atlas tank car made it's first appearance on the JSSX in quite some time this week.

This dual-diameter, or whalebelly, tank car certainly looks like it's been out in the weather.  These tank cars were removed from the prototype railways some years ago, but it is a nice model to have.

I had trouble coupling this tank car into a train that was on the layout, so I brought it over to the bench to have a closer look. It appeared that the Accumate brand couplers that were on it didn't match up well with the smaller and closer-to-scale Kadee #158's that I have on that particular boxcar, as well as having them on a great many more freight cars.

So, I decided it was time to change from the Accumate couplers...

Here we have the 2-piece Accumate couplers on the left, and the replacements I decided to go with, Kadee's "shelf" style couplers on the right.  I don't know the part number of the shelf couplers.  These were given to me by Brian Smith.

I don't think that the process of replacement could have gone much smoother. I had it done in about 5 minutes, and very remarkably didn't break any of the more delicate parts on the tank car in the process.

With the shelf coupler on the tank car, we can see the piece that sticks up above the coupler that is designed to prevent couplers from riding up overtop of each other and possibly piercing the actual tank in an accident. I still need to paint the couplers, and I'll probably snip off that bottom trip-pin as well.

Another look at ACFX 17440.  Here, it's coupled between a plastics pellet hopper and a kitbashed extended height boxcar.

 

In other news, check this out when you might have a few minutes.  I found that YouTube has a new railcam set up at the very busy Blue Island in Chicago. Here's the link to that railcam:

🔴 LIVE Trains | Blue Island, Illinois PTZ (youtube.com)

Happy modeling everybody.