Yesterday morning I got curious, what was the article 5 years ago today? It was one on a great truck project I had inherited, on some Sn3.5 arch bar trucks from New Zealand that another OO gauger had purchased to use in American OO. The trucks are by North Yard.

What had got me stalled then was I did not have a drill press and there were so many holes to drill (and tap) in lost wax castings. And actually, the earlier article did not say this, but I had another type of truck from the same firm, the truck you see here that is a close stand-in for a leaf spring Bettendorf truck. The spring hanger is narrow and a couple details are bit different than North American practices, but then again these look a LOT better than Scale-Craft trucks! This car being by Scale-Craft; it was my very first OO scale caboose.

I now have two pair of these together and rolling with parts for a third, seen in the second photo. Not shown are the wheelsets and the bearing inserts. These roll great! I believe these were used on a class of tank car in New Zealand, and due to a quirk of gauges and scales are just about dead on for American OO.

What really had me stalled originally was no I had no drill press. I subsequently obtained a stand for my Dremel tool that is a good imitation, and I made a jig to help hold the side frames when drilling.

The last photo is a close up of a finished truck, but this one on a Lionel caboose. While everything is set up I will try to finish all the North Yard trucks on hand. I will run out of the North Yard bolsters but have some others scoped out that I can modify to work, and I may be short a few screws but should get all the remaining pair running in the next month or so.

Building up the first two pair of these was a great quick break and it is good to see my modeling skills going up a bit over time as well. I have a specific caboose project in mind for the final set of these parts; perhaps having them will get that project moving along soon as well.

UPDATE: I got all of the North Yard trucks from this project together, including four pair of the arch bar trucks featured in the article 5 years ago. Now to build up some cars worthy of them!