A quick 5 minute job. Wrong!

 As is a trait of mine, I got side tracked from the Dapol signal gantry by this!

Not sure of the manufacturer as there are no markings on the model but suspect that it is a Athearn union pacific fruit express reefer. I bought it with several other freight cars at the Newark Toy and train Fair on New Years Day. I did wonder why it was so much lower in height than usual freight cars but some research revealed that these cars were specially developed to travel with passenger coaches so that the fruit that they contained was delivered more quickly than if it had been hauled as part of a conventional freight train.

Now this particular model had an issue but at I think £3 that was something I could easily fix - or so I thought! The issue was that it rattled and that was caused by the ballast weight in the car body being loose. Now normally you remove the floor and get into the body and as when I bought it I saw two screws holding the bogies on I though no problems to get that floor out then. Since being bought the reefer has sat awaiting attention and as I had to move it to get at something I was remined of the need for attention. A quick 5 minute job. Wrong!

Having removed the bogies I found that the floor is part of the body moulding and the roof is the way in. However, the roof was glued in place! Being careful I managed to break the glue bond and get the roof off. So far that 5 minute job had taken about an hour!

I suspect by looking at it, that the loose ballast weight had previously been attended to looking at the glue marks on it but obviously not successfully! 

My solution for a permanent repair was to use double sided tape.

With that applied the weight was stuck to the reefer floor. Just put the roof back on which luckily I did not glue yet and then replace the bogies.

As I screwed in the screws that held the bogies I found out why the ballast weight was loose as I heard a thud inside the reefer body. Taking the roof off it was clear that the screws protruded above the floor level and had pushed the ballast weight off the floor.

I could have shortened the screws but that had issues so as the ballast weight was only a couple of mm too long I used a file to create a notch at each end of the weight which cleared the screws!  Now into the job by an hour and a half I reapplied some double sided tape and reattached the weight, replaced the roof, reattached the bogies this time with no internal thud and job done!