One party, NMRA member, told us the original weight requirements were put in place for the early trucks. Guy models the B&O in the fifties. He had quite a few articles in Railroad Model Journal.
I usually use two large nuts per boxcar. Leave one truck loose and keep the other tighter.
Prefer the semiscale wheels and sergent couplers.

Mark Morgan

John, I know for sure in some cases the 40-ton or 50-ton capacity of
a box car was strictly a matter of the trucks, and not the car itself.
Wabash had old trucks put under some new box cars and these cars were
rated at 40 tons. So the differences in crossbearers of the B-4 and
B-5 may, or may not, have anything to do with their capacities.

Tim O'Connor

If it means anything, the B-4 was a 40-ton car, and the B-5--which used only the single heavy crossbearer--was a 50-ton car. You would think the application of the bearers would be reversed.
John Golden
Bloomington, IN

I am wondering if anyone on this list has a copy of the Railway Age from April 18, 1955. I believe the date is correct but the copy I have of the article I have is not sharp so I could be off in terms of the day of the month. The article in question is "Mechanical Cooling Pays Its Way" by C. B. Peck.

If you have a copy, or access to one, could you please contact me offline at fgexbill@... I would like to try to get a better copy of this article for my reseach.

Thanks!

Bill Welch

In his rollability testing, Brian used the same box car with the same
trucks, swapping out the wheelsets for the tests. So the only variable was
the wheelsets themselves.

gary roe
quincy, illinois

_____

Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2010 5:48 PM
To: STMFC@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [STMFC] Re: model car weight

Gary

A lot of factors influence performance - metal or plastic, sintered or
machined metal, machined brass or machined nickel silver, dirt or oil on
the track, pointed or shoulder journals, fat taper or narrow taper, metal
or abs or delrin sideframes, equalized vs nonequalized, sprung or
unsprung...
But all else being equal, my experience is that metal wheels outlast and
outperform plastic wheels by a huge margin in HO scale. If you think about
the physics of wheels on rails, the weight of an N scale car per square
centimeter of rail contact is far less than it is for HO scale cars, so
direct performance comparisons are not meaningful between N and HO scales
(or between HO and O, or O scale and 1:1)

In his rollability testing, Brian used the same box car with the same
trucks, swapping out the wheelsets for the tests. So the only variable was
the wheelsets themselves.

gary roe
quincy, illinois

_____

Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2010 5:48 PM
To: STMFC@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [STMFC] Re: model car weight

Gary

A lot of factors influence performance - metal or plastic, sintered or
machined metal, machined brass or machined nickel silver, dirt or oil on
the track, pointed or shoulder journals, fat taper or narrow taper, metal
or abs or delrin sideframes, equalized vs nonequalized, sprung or
unsprung...
But all else being equal, my experience is that metal wheels outlast and
outperform plastic wheels by a huge margin in HO scale. If you think about
the physics of wheels on rails, the weight of an N scale car per square
centimeter of rail contact is far less than it is for HO scale cars, so
direct performance comparisons are not meaningful between N and HO scales
(or between HO and O, or O scale and 1:1)

On a related note, the Jul/Aug issue of N Scale Railroading magazine had an
article about a test performed by Brian Morgan on all the different wheel
sets for N Scale equipment. I expected to see that metal wheelsets rolled
better than plastic ones, and his test bore this out......on new wheels.
Once he had run them for 1000 scale miles (he said he had a lot of time),
the metal wheelsets rollability dropped off quite a bit, while the
Micro-Trains plastic low profile wheelsets hardly dropped off at all.

gary roe
quincy, illinois

On a related note, the Jul/Aug issue of N Scale Railroading magazine had an
article about a test performed by Brian Morgan on all the different wheel
sets for N Scale equipment. I expected to see that metal wheelsets rolled
better than plastic ones, and his test bore this out......on new wheels.
Once he had run them for 1000 scale miles (he said he had a lot of time),
the metal wheelsets rollability dropped off quite a bit, while the
Micro-Trains plastic low profile wheelsets hardly dropped off at all.

gary roe
quincy, illinois

On Jul 19, 2010, at 10:19 PM, Steve Lucas wrote:

In Hamilton, Ontario, in January, 1991, I took a photo of UTLX 91624,
shown as "BLT 5 71". But a stencil under the car number says "UTC 7
51". Capacity stencilled on the end of the tank is given as "10 987
GAL US". This car seems very similar to the Atlas HO ICC-105 tank car.

This car number shows as part of series 91000 to 93999 in the
January, 1953 ORER.

Steve,
The 91000-series UTLX tank cars were nearly 4' longer than the
equivalent 11,000-gallon ICC 105A cars built by AC&F beginning in 1947.
The tank diameter was correspondingly smaller than on the cars built by
AC&F.

There was a relatively low number of 11,000-gallon 105A tank cars built
by AC&F and sold to the Union Tank Line that could possibly "match" the
Atlas model. Four orders were very small quantities. Given the large
quantities of UTLX cars that were often built in a given order, these
small quantities make no sense to me unless UTLX bought cars that were
originally ordered by someone else and then the orders were cancelled
after the cars were already in production. Perhaps UTLX got a "good
deal" price from AC&F that was too good to pass up. Each of the
following 5 orders were ACF-design cars having 38'-5" long underframes
(measured to end sills).

96263-96272, 10 cars, lot 3169, 2-48
96291-96297, 7 cars, lot 3225, 7-48
99273-99274, 2 cars, lot 3384, 11-48
96275-96276, 2 cars, lot 3356, 11-48
96412-96461, 50 cars, lot 3748, 6-52

Incidentally, the lot 3748 order was the final UTLX order from AC&F
during the 1950s. Subsequent UTLX tank cars built during the 1950s were
by by the company at their own shops.

In 1947-1949 UTLX received 2,400 cars built by AC&F to UTLX design with
underframe length of 42'-3" between end sills.

92000-93199, 1,200 cars, lot 3263, 5-48
93800-93999, 200 cars, lot 3263B, ca. 1949
98195-98899, 705 cars, lot 3085, 5-47
99223-99322, 100 cars, lot 3263A, ca. 1948 or 1949
99400-99499, 100 cars, lot 3103, 7-47
99905-99999, 95 cars, lot 3085, 5-47

A photo from the Charles Winters collection of UTLX 94751 shows an
11,000-gallon, ICC 105A300W, 42'-3"-long, propane car built 9-54 and
lettered for Anchorgas. The car displays similar graphics to the Atlas
model of URTX 94614 shown on their web site. However, the Atlas model
is a bogus representation of the prototype UTLX-design cars of this
type. Hope this helps.
Regards,
Ed Hawkins

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

With the growing use of semi-scale wheel sets and their improved rolling characteristics, has anyone done any research or have an opinion on the suggested weight of model freight cars?
I thought I had heard one opinion that the the NMRA RP for car weight are somewhat heavy for today's better rolling models.
Thanks,
Pierre Oliver

One party, NMRA member, told us the original weight requirements were put in place for the early trucks. Guy models the B&O in the fifties. He had quite a few articles in Railroad Model Journal.
I usually use two large nuts per boxcar. Leave one truck loose and keep the other tighter.
Prefer the semiscale wheels and sergent couplers.

Mark Morgan
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

-----Original Message-----
From: "Pierre" <pierre.oliver@start.ca>
Sender: STMFC@yahoogroups.com
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2010 21:38:06
To: <STMFC@yahoogroups.com>
Reply-To: STMFC@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [STMFC] model car weight

With the growing use of semi-scale wheel sets and their improved rolling characteristics, has anyone done any research or have an opinion on the suggested weight of model freight cars?
I thought I had heard one opinion that the the NMRA RP for car weight are somewhat heavy for today's better rolling models.
Thanks,
Pierre Oliver




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



------------------------------------

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If it means anything, the B-4 was a 40-ton car, and the B-5--which used only the single heavy crossbearer--was a 50-ton car. You would think the application of the bearers would be reversed.
John Golden
Bloomington, IN