Beautiful work, Tom. You and Don Wirth have the patience of a saint to go through what it takes to do such nice work. I added electrical pickups to the trucks and a Current Keeper and Soundcar decoder and lighted the rear marker on a Hallmark Caboose for Bob Hoover.
A while since these Overland wide visions are in service. I noticed while these two cabs were couple to a few other wide visions, that these two OM cabs sat a bit higher than the others. I particularly thought they sat too high high on the truck bolsters. So, I studies them for a while, and after a bit, I thought maybe, just maybe, I could fix with other trucks, nope that didnt work. Then I noticed the bolsters were screw mounted to the side frames on the OM trucks. So I took the trucks apart did a bit of machining and basically was able to swap the bolster from the top side of the bolster mount to the bottom. And this was successful, now they dont look like they have a lift kit under them. Just had to put undercut shank couplers and a perfect height was achieved. A couple images of them sitting a bit high in the saddle or bolster in this case. This is the image that caught my eye about them sitting too high. And now the O/W sitting the correct height, as compared to the R/W/B OM model I shouldnt let those little things like bother me but I do, LOL.
Lots of cars sit too high on the trucks, especially blue box kit cars which I still have a number of. You can always file down the top of the truck bolster , easy with delrin trucks which are easily replaceable. The difference in appearance when lowered is astounding. You’ll need to adjust coupler height, Kadee undershots do a great job. Replace the stirrups with A Lines, put a better brakewheel on , and you actually have a not so bad car. If you really want to go wild, add cut levers and the little ratchet where the brakewheel rod goes under the car. I had too many of these cars to ditch them, but these little tweaks make them tolerable looking next to the Intermountains and the Kadees. Any one else done any of this?
I forgot , thick roofwalks are also an easily correctable flaw on blue box cars. In more recent times Athearn and Roundhouse made those cars on more realistic boxcar red schemes. In the the 60’s you had to repaint and decal bright loud train set type cars like NYC and GN jade green, State of Maine boxcars, bright red huge lettered M& StL boxcars, etc.
