Bachmann wagons - freeing wire over axles

[philsandy]

I bought these Bachmann mineral wagons which I need to convert to EM.

To flick out the original wheel sets there is a fine wire over each axle end that needs to be removed, or freed at one end.  

They seem to be glued into the underside of the body. They can be snipped with wire cutters and then glued back with superglue, but I just wondered if there was an easier way of freeing them and then fixing back in position.

[Tim Lewis]

They are the safety loops.  In my experience, sometimes they come out very easily, sometimes they don;t come out at all, and (worst) sometimes they come out significantly distorted.  If it's just a straight wheel swap you want to do (which is what I've done on 20 or so), then I'd just snip the safety loop in line with the axle.  You can get the wheels out easily enough with them still in place.  Take care putting in the new wheels but it's easy enough (in P4 you have to file the plastic a bit to get sufficient clearance, but you may be alright in EM.  I don't bother re-joining the two halves of the safety loop (it can't be seen from normal viewing angles), but if you really wanted to then you could slip a suitably sized short tube over the ends: you probably wouldn't see it behind the wheels either.

[philsandy]

Thanks for that Tim.

I'll cut them in line with the axle, that does seem the easist way of doing it.