I had a group of three Scale-Craft hopers I had repainted and lettered with Tichy decals — cars that I rarely operated, as I never put Kadee couplers on them. But decaled as they are they fit with my 1960 era operations, and they needed an upgrade.

The big issue is that, unlike most S-C models, there is no way to easily drop any Kadee coupler into the coupler mounts of this car — something that I had also not taken account of when I painted the cars.

The solution involved the tools seen here, a jewelers saw and a small file that cuts well. This type of saw allowed me to work around the steps, and the file got things down to a nice level surface.

This second photo shows the surface that you get after the modifications.

I used Kadee #143 short shank couplers, which look better in this application than the standard shank version. In the photo you can see that I damaged the paint a bit, it was touched up before putting on the trucks.

And finally a finished car. I do still plan to weather the three cars and I know that in an ideal world I would have also added brake details. I may come back to that someday. While there are no brake details, at least the cars do not have incorrect brake details for 1960s operation.