For those who will be attending Naperville, I am offering to sell, on
site, copies of "NYC Color Guide[ ]Vol.2" for $48. This book was
released by Morning Sun on August 1. All copies will be autographed by
all three authors (as if you cared 8^) ).

Because I will be travelling via Amtrak, I will be able to carry only a
limited number of copies (these things weigh a ton). Therefore, if you
want one and haven't already found it at a competitive price, please
contact me off-list by October 25th.

Jeff English
Troy, New York
early home of Theodore Judah and Leland Stanford, Western railroad
pioneers

John,

Thanks for that instruction, now I feel safe using this type equipment on the layout.
Just finishing up a PRR weed sprayer, and have been toying with the rail grinder. This fits in nicely.

Fred Freitas

List,

Word of the recent discussion of near scale size couplers and draft gear boxes finally prompted me to join this forum. I spent some time last night reading the entire thread, until it was way too late to compose a reply. I'll try to make comment on all the points raised in this one message.

Material:
Both the Accumate PROTO:HO couplers and boxes are made from acetal co-polymer engineering resin; either Celcon or its equivelant. This material was chosen for its high strength, high stiffness, and low coefficient of friction. While the most important property for the couplers is strength, the most important property for the box is stiffness. The problems that some have reported with the standard size Accumate couplers "jamming open" is due specifically to boxes that are either too deep (too much space above or below the coupler shank) or boxes with covers that are too flexible. The amount that the twin shanks of Accumate couplers can offset to open the knuckle is limited by a tiny interlock between the adjacent surfaces of the shanks, and too much clearance allows the interlock peg to come out of its slot and jam against the opposing surface. The parts won't be damaged, but the situation is inconvenient. The standard size Accumates exhibit more problems in this regard than the PROTO version simply because we have no control over the dimensions of the boxes other manufacturers build into their floors.

While both couplers and boxes are made of the same material, they are not made in the same mold; each is in a different tool, one pair of coupler shanks in one and a pair of boxes and covers in another. This is "runnerless" molding, every molecule of plastic we shoot is shipped to you. There are no scrap sprues to be reground and used again, degrading the material properties further with each pass through the molding machine. By using only virgin material in these parts we guarantee that you get all the physical properties the resin manufacturer designed into the material.

Screws:
While it may appear convenient to simply cement the draft gear boxes in place, this will ultimately not have the strength to ensure that the coupler shanks can't spread and jam, therefore we don't recommend any mounting that doesn't have a screw through the boss that the couplers pivot on. As Dr. Anspach pointed out, a 00-90 flathead screw can be used in this location after first lightly countersinking the hole. We chose to go with the 0-80 screw because many people are uncomfortable with working with the smaller size drills, taps, and screws. I did consider incorporating the countersink in the mold and allowing it to be covered by the larger 0-80 pan head, but doing so would only give the 0-80 head bearing outside the area supported by the boss, making it easy to pinch the coupler shanks by over tightening the screw. The box is easy enough to coutersink by hand for those special cars.

Design, Engineering, and Execution:
Dr. Anspach is correct that the PROTO:HO coupler and its draft gear were "engineered" as a system, although since I don't have an engineering degree, I prefer the term designed. And yes, during the building of the tool the core pins that make the mounting holes ended up slightly off center in the bosses. As they say, stuff happens. Since this really doesn't affect the utility of the parts, the decision was made not to do an extensive re-work to the pins. However, the fact that one side of the boss is thinner makes this the first area on the part that doesn't fill, a "short shot". We consider these short shots a defective part, and like any defective Accurail part, we will replace any that are sent to us.

Dimensions and Car Spacing:
The PROTO:HO draft gear was designed to appear to be the continuation of the center sills through the body bolster. The box is designed to match the common 20 1/2" width of center sill cover plates that was common during the late steam / early Diesel era. The detailing on the underside of the box represents the commonly used friction draft gears of the day, contained by the sills, draft lugs, coupler yoke, and yoke support plate. The coupler head itself is a dimensionally accurate model of the AAR Type E coupler, with the knuckle shape modified to allow coupling with the other common magnetic couplers. Since the coupler head is positioned to match the common 3" striker horn to striker plate spacing used with these draft gears , if the end of the draft gear box is positioned where the prototype striker plate is located, the models will have the proper distance between cars. This isn't necessarily where the oversize box provided on some models ends, as none of the manufacturers has really paid much attention to these dimensions in the past, because all the available couplers were oversize. Keep in mind, when modeling more modern prototypes with extended draft gear, long shank couplers, or end of car cushioning devices, that the position of the PROTO:HO box may have to be adjusted to put the coupler pulling face at the proper location.

Mounting on cars without molded on boxes:
Dr. Anspach has given us an excellent summary of how the PROTO:HO box lends itself to mounting on most commercially available equipment, but someone asked about mounting on models where there is no coupler box provided, such as resin kits. The maybe not so obvious answer is to simply use both parts of the box that are provided with the couplers. While the unique design of the Accumate PROTO:HO coupler allows it to be mounted in the box alone, using the surface of the existing box as the cover, press-on covers are provided that when used, yield the same mounting surface dimension as the other popular couplers. These covers are also useful for modeling the extended draft gears on modern cars.

I hope this answers any questions that anyone had.


Dennis Storzek

Thanks, Ben!

Elden

See.... it works!

www.caboosesnorthwest.com

Regards,
Phil Buchwald



--- In STMFC@..., "buchwaldfam" <duff@g...> wrote:

So.... is it possible to get some manufacturer to produce a
model of a certain prototype by convincing him that you are

tooling up

such a model yourself? In that case, I'm right in the middle of
tooling for a Milwaukee Road Rib Side caboose. Pre-oil furnace. ;>

Phil Buchwald

--- In STMFC@..., timboconnor@c... wrote:

Long ago and

far away an independent toolmaker had done wonderful tooling for

a

PFE R-40-23 reefer but a vendor found out about it and rushed a

kit

into production.... and that pretty much killed off that

toolmaker's biz

from what I heard. (I may have left out few salient details.)

Fred;
You haven't been reading TKM! You will get more of these next month in
TKM, courtesy of Al Buchan, including the fire fighting equipment
mounted on F31A's.

Elden Gatwood

Tim,

The NKP stats listed are for all freight traffic right? We are talking
general service boxcars for Swift (disregarding the tank cars for this
discussion), right? When considering the eastbound refrigerated traffic
that the NKP enjoyed I would still think the westbound merchandise
shipped in general service boxcars could not be balanced (except during
the harvest) causing them to accumulate at Frankfort making lots of them
available to Swift.

Thank you for the correction as to the eastbound vs. westbound imbalance
on the NKP. I had though the opposite. It sure would be nice to see
what caused this.

Mont Switzer

--- In STMFC@..., "lnbill" <bwelch@u...> wrote:

I hope that drawing in PR CYC is not a steel reefer. It should be

the

drawing of the wartime built plywood reefers that is the subject of

the

article wherein the drawing appears

Bill Welch

Yes Bill, you are correct. It's a war time reefer with plywood side,
steel roof and steel ends.

Ed

This should be of interest to this group.


http://www.trainweb.org/phillynrhs/RPOTD051012.html


Dave Pfeiffer

Thanks Doug! I'll add that info in.

Mike

--- Doug Rhodes <farronhill@...> wrote:

Mike,the 1952 CPR Summary of Equipment shows
CP180528 as a 36 foot steel
frame box car, one of 16,030 similar cars in service
on CPR in that year.
That would be the "Dominion" or "Fowler" type single
sheathed wood car,
built between 1909 and 1913.

Hope this helps
Doug Rhodes

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Aufderheide" <mononinmonon@...>
To: <STMFC@...>
Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 8:52 AM
Subject: Re: [STMFC] Re: Bil Darnaby's List of 1949
Boxcar Movements from
Swift's Soy Bean Processing Operation in Frankfort
IN


snipped

CP ? 180528 RUBBER Northbound to Michigan City

(CSSSB

PM NYC)
CP B 247203 PAPER Southbound to Bloomington

Any thoughts?

Regards,

Mike

__________________________________
Yahoo! Music Unlimited
Access over 1 million songs. Try it free.
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List,

This past August, a group from NH arrived for the annual Fireman's Muster & Parade here in Vt.
The display item they brought was a Fairmont speeder and 2 "flats" that made up the fire crew's service unit.
Does anyone on the list know if any of the prototype RR's had such equipment for fire train service? There have been pix of flats, tanks,etc. over the years, and I got to wondering if this idea was used in the 1950's.
The men who brought the "train" claim you need a good orthodontist to keep your teeth in line, as these speeders have no springs. Doc Denny, is it true your teeth will chatter on long rides on one of these?
Thanks for your time, and info.

Fred Freitas

Thanks everyone who responded to my original question about 50' 1937
AAR cars. The Steam Freight cars list is terrific however all of the
cars listed are 40 footers as far as I can tell. The CG 50' door and
a half cars have all the hallmarks of the 1937 AAR standardized
design (Murphy Roofs and ends, 10" inside height) so I think it's
safe to assume they are also part of the 1937 standardized car
program. A number of other 10' IH 50s were mentioned in the thread.
This car sounds like a good candidate for a urethane kit.

Richard's freight car search page is a great resource. Tim, thanks
for suggesting it. It continues to amaze me to see the willingness
of people who participate in STMFC to share with all of us the
wealth of information that's available.

See you in N'ville.


Bill McCoy
Jax


--- In STMFC@..., Tim O'Connor <timboconnor@c...> wrote:

Hmmmmmmmm.... sounds like someone has some catching up to do! :-)

Bill, check out Ted Culotta's web site for an annotated roster
of owners. They were legion.

http://www.steamfreightcars.com/prototype/frtcars/1937aarmain.html

The Southern Pacific owned nearly 8,000 of these cars in 5 classes
(B-50-18, -19, -20, -21, -23) with variations of ends, doors,

trucks,

brakes and running boards. They were the dominant steel SP box car
for more than 10 years.

You can find a lot of information in the FCL archive:

http://www.photo.tntech.edu/~richard/Freightcars/archive/search.php3

For example I searched for "1937 AAR box" and got 403 hits, many of
them actually relevant! Or you can Google for the above and find

the

above two web sites and a number of others.

Tim O'Connor

I just came across a stash of unbuilt kits labeled as 1937 AAR

Box Car

by Innovative Model Works deep in my model railroad storage

cabinet.

While one of the kits is lettered SP, the remainder of the stash

of 8

or 10 kits are undecorated. Can anyone in the group provide

prototype

information as to which railroads owned these cars?
Thanks, in advance, for any info.
-- Bill Keene
Irvine, CA

There have been plenty of examples of fire fighting done from speeder/push
car combinations. The most common circumstances were caused by the use of
self-propelled weed burners, made by Woolery and by Fairmont. It was common practice
to follow the weed burner with a speeder towing a push car with a small water
tank, to put out any fires that threatened to spread behind the burn swath or
persist in old crossties.

Weyerhauser, at least, and probably other loggers in the Pacific Northwest,
where fire was a constant danger, had fire trains ready to go at all times.
Most were full size cars, but I have a photo of at least one very large speeder
with a tank trailer and two flat cars, all larger then the standard push cars.

Today's rail grinding trains have a couple of tank cars and a fire car on the
tail end to put out fires caused by sparks from the grinding operation, but
again these are full-sized cars.

John C. La Rue, Jr.
Bonita Springs, FL

--- In STMFC@..., jaley <jaley@p...> wrote:

Why is equalization important? I cannot recall the last time I
have seen a derailment (on layouts owned by several other folks,

including

a club) that was caused by a lack of equalization. By this, I ASSUME

that

equalization prevents a truck from derailing with three wheels on the
rails, and the fourth up in the air (due to extremely bad trackwork).

That would be my question too. If a truck goes over a low spot where
one wheel would be in the air it should in reality not. Why? Because
the axles have axial play in the sideframe bearings. A wheelset that is
supported only on one side will drop as far as the axle play will let
it. The limiting factor is the weight of the car. This is pushing down
at the axle tip while the rail forces up at the wheel. A lever of about
0.18" using the typical 1.015" axle length. The lever of the wheel on
the opposite, low, side will be 0.65" (track gauge). A factor of 3.5 in
favor of the wheel's weight against the 1/8th of the car's in a
perfectly leveraged truck arrangement (total flexibility). Which is not
present on most model cars. The trucks movements are restricted by the
kingpin. This affects weight distribution in reality. I don't have the
weight numbers ready (too pounderous ;-) but imagine the wheel will
follow the depressing avoiding becoming derailed. This all is only true
if not other forces interfere and cause a derailment by too much
sideforce exerted on the truck.

So my guess is that a lot of flex is not really necessary. The built in
looseness of axle play and inherently truck elasticity should be enough
under normal conditions.

Manfred

I understand that the P87 shop will come up with a heftier spring to
be applied in Kadee trucks. It is a metal spring just with a rubbery
coating.

My observation as to the effect real springs have is that they do
actually not depress. To achieve this I always thought of using the
vastly weaker Kadee knuckle springs. What they do is give the whole
truck assembly more flex. A feature more needed if one uses P87
standards. I noticed while testing the droppability of Reboxx 088
wheels in Accurail trucks at the switch point that these also have a
live give and flexibility. I took my index finder for a ride over the
point and saw how the free hanging wheel dropped ever so slightly in
the gap. It was not well enough established to give a big bang but it
was a recognizeable drop of the sideframe.

My approach is to exchange the springs with thicker guitar wire
fabrications on the home shop. This gives the prototypical meat and
does not affect flexing to a degree that would be rated as non-
existant.


To sum it up: Even "rigid" trucks have some flexibility which was
thought (by me) to be an exclusive, and the onle sigfnificant,
feature of sprung trucks.

Manfred

--- In STMFC@..., "Mike Brock" <brockm@b...> wrote:

... I just filled the things up with epoxy. Worked well. Can't see

through them and the car doesn't derail. Does seem sorta odd though.

Mike,the 1952 CPR Summary of Equipment shows CP180528 as a 36 foot steel frame box car, one of 16,030 similar cars in service on CPR in that year. That would be the "Dominion" or "Fowler" type single sheathed wood car, built between 1909 and 1913.

Hope this helps
Doug Rhodes

Hmmmmmmmm.... sounds like someone has some catching up to do! :-)

Bill, check out Ted Culotta's web site for an annotated roster
of owners. They were legion.

http://www.steamfreightcars.com/prototype/frtcars/1937aarmain.html

The Southern Pacific owned nearly 8,000 of these cars in 5 classes
(B-50-18, -19, -20, -21, -23) with variations of ends, doors, trucks,
brakes and running boards. They were the dominant steel SP box car
for more than 10 years.

You can find a lot of information in the FCL archive:

http://www.photo.tntech.edu/~richard/Freightcars/archive/search.php3

For example I searched for "1937 AAR box" and got 403 hits, many of
them actually relevant! Or you can Google for the above and find the
above two web sites and a number of others.

Tim O'Connor

I can't tell you about your mind but There is stuff missing from the FF rutland site. No gondolas
though.


Eric Petersson


Jace wrote:

"Is my mind already starting to go, or has George Elwood's website deleted views? I had gotten
the idea of converting a Rutland #4000 series woodside gondola, using an extra 40' flat (from the
CDS lettering for the same) and was sure I had found a nice scan of one on his website several
months back.

I just went to look again (now that I am about to start construction) and the Rutland selection is
thin, indeed: very little rolling stock"



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With all this talk of "equalizing" springs, using real springs, and putting "scene blocks" behind see through springs, I have to laugh at one of my efforts. Blocks behind springs? Heck no, I just filled the things up with epoxy. Worked well. Can't see through them and the car doesn't derail. Does seem sorta odd though.

Mike Brock...KIS [ Note that I left off the last "S". Don't want to upset anyone. Of course I could have used the letter "B" [ Bozo is an accepted term on the STMFC...except, naturally, when applied to your servant ] but, then no one would have known what I meant.