One thing you need on train cars are trucks. Bill Gilbert has been focusing on building a fleet of 19th century cars lately, and with a truck shortage came up with an interesting conversion.

What he noted was, to quote him, “the Mantua HO arch bar trucks with the steam engine have a sheet metal bolster that can be flattened out with pliers.” You would do this just enough to put widened out HO 36” wheelsets in the frames. “They are short (4’-6”) vs (5’-0”) but look good under the short tender.”

As he noted, the wheelbase is short on these Mantua/Tyco trucks but it is a decent stand in, and I think better than another possible substitute, On3 trucks. I tried to arrange the trucks in the photo to show the bolsters and side frames. These are not yet modified for OO and I’ll be sending them to Bill.

The best though I still think are Sn3 conversion trucks, the PBL trucks being a little pricy but they roll and look good, worth the effort.