Here's the (unbelievable) update. The Dremel tool grinding stone 911 worked better than the pretty useless drill bit but kept slipping and took off some plastic because it was a bit too large. A narrower grinding tip didn't work when tried from the underside of the rivet. It was easy keeping the rivet cool by just pouring water over it, while working at the kitchen counter, but it was pretty obvious that this method would take the remainder of my adult life to remove. After consulting with Nick the manager at my local Aubuchon Hardware store, he offered to help. Nick theorized that the rivet kept turning and that maybe holding the Dremel tool sideways would help prevent the spin, but it still would have taken off some plastic on the chassis. By contrast, when I used the jeweler's saw, I was able to hold the rivet firmly in place while sawing. Unfortunately, they didn't have the tiny saw blades.
So, Nick sank a drill bit into a piece of wood after taping it in the underside of the rivet. He then placed the bottom of the rivet over the drill bit. This served to anchor the rivet by creating a counter direction to the drill's spin direction. (He previously tried setting the rivet on top of a file to anchor it, but that pesky counter sunk plastic made that solution useless.) Then, using a surprisingly thin metal drill bit like my jewelry bits, and a slow setting, he created starter holes in the tops of the rivets. This took considerable time. Then he moved on to a very large wood drill because that's all he had. It was amazing how it really tore through the metal whereas my "Cobalt" works-on-any metal drill bit did absolutely nothing. It still took a very long time. Nick is a patient man. To deal with the friction and heat problem - there was no water in the back room - he just switched to the other truck when the one he was working on got hot. After another very considerable length of time, he had both trucks off. What a guy! This store manager went above and beyond the call in my book.
I went home and used my new Dremel tool to clean up the holes for the screws and put the new Lionel 6-14078 trucks on, and they are everything I'd hoped they'd be. The box car now tracks beautifully and the doors stay shut because the ride is so steady now.
If I ever do this again, I'm going to go back to the jeweler's saw approach. I'm having PC problems, otherwise I'd post a pic of the counter sunk plastic that added a level of complexity in removing rivets for the original trucks.
Tomlinson Run Railroad
