Altering Gibson Wheels for the Archbar Period

The Proto:87 wheels produced to date by Alan Gibson are of very good quality, but lack the details of North American wheels common at the turn of the century. Since I model the Northern Pacific Railway, circa 1904, this incorrect appearance is a problem.

This article outlines a method for adding rib details to the back of Gibson wheels and "dishing" the wheel front.

My primary goal for this project was to create a quick and inexpensive method for altering the appearance of Gibson wheels. I do not own any machine tools, and I suspect many of my peers do not either, so the method developed needed to be usable with simple tools.

The method I developed starts with a wheel back detail casting. I first created a rubber mold of Kaydee wheels since they have reasonable wheel back details and there were a few hiding in my odds and ends box. This allowed me to cast resin wheels that were roughly the size of an NMRA RP25 wheel. These castings were then sanded down to the size needed and a rubber mold was made of these detail parts. At this point, it was fairly simple to cast a large number of wheel back detail parts.

Now comes the process of attaching the wheel back detail to the Gibson wheel. This may seem like a simple exercise, but I have a small pile of destroyed wheels to prove otherwise. Altering the Gibson wheel to accept the wheel back detail and attaching that detail must be done very carefully otherwise the wheel will warp.

The procedure follows:

1. Seperate the axle, wheel and tire.
2. Place wheel on the axle and chuck the axle into a motor tool.
3. Using the blunt end of a small 1/8" bit as a cutting tool, slowly remove the "bump" from the wheel face, leaving a dished face.
4. Using a sharp knife blade as a scraping tool, remove .020" from the back of the wheel, leaving the hub area at its full thickness, in preparation for the wheelback detail.
5. Carefully sand/trim the wheelback detail to fit the wheel.
6. Attach the wheelback detail with a tiny amount of ACC at the wheel hub. Do not use too much glue or the wheel will deform.
7. Replace the tire.

I wish I could report great success in this endevor, but instead I must report that this effort has proven a disappointment. The time required to detail a single wheel runs 30 to 60 minutes, which is excessive for all but the most prized models. Further, the inexact techniques used with this method result in a roughly 25% failure rate.

On a positive note, this procedure does result in a reasonably nice looking wheel for turn-of-the-century rolling stock and the tools required are minimal.