On Oct 19, 2005, at 3:43 PM, Blake Tatar wrote:

I have decided to model the 1915 to 1919 time period. I will be building a small HO railroad at eye level so I have been detailing the heck out of my freight cars. I have looked at many Andrews trucks and have some questions. I know that the Kadee Andrews trucks are the earlier ones. I have been looking at the Accurail and the Red Caboose trucks. Funny thing is, the Accurails look great but the lettering is indented as opposed to protruding. Was there a prototype for these? The Red Caboose trucks look great and are identical to the photos on the RPI website but I don't like the "equalizing" feature. I have drilled holes and added brass .020" wire through the bolster and the pin to keep the sideframes from spreading out or moving up and down. After a while I started to question if either set would fit my time frame. Which manufacturers make Andrews trucks that would fit my time period?

There were many styles of Andrews trucks in use in the 1915-1919 era and, as always, the only way to be sure you're right is to work from photos of the particular prototype cars you're modeling. Early Andrews trucks had L-section side frames like the Kadee truck, but many had short horizontal journal box retainer bars (as on later U-section Andrews trucks) rather than the one piece angled retainer bar modeled by Kadee. It's not too difficult to model these by modifying the Kadee side frames. Andrews trucks with U-section side frames came in many configurations. The Red Caboose trucks are good models of the Andrews trucks used on Mather cars (and some other freight cars), as are those made by Life-Like, which have rigid frames. Accurail's Andrews truck is a good representation of the USRA standard Andrews truck which, though adopted by the USRA in 1919, was very similar to some earlier Andrews designs. The indented lettering seems to me to be a non-issue, as it's so small as to be virtually invisible unless you're looking at the trucks with a magnifier. However, if it bothers you, both Intermountain and Tichy offer very similar Andrews trucks without the lettering. Eastern Car Works has in kit form what they call a "Birdsboro Andrews" truck which represents a U-section truck with an absolutely straight top chord, should you find that you need trucks of that description. If you want to model a Pennsylvania RR 70 ton car, the "Crown" Andrews trucks applied to such cars in your era are made in HO by Bowser. There are also older HO scale Andrews trucks on the market (e.g., Walthers) but they tend to be crude by current standards and aren't significantly different in design from the trucks noted above.

Richard Hendrickson