No offense intended for ALL lawyers, of course, but there was a comedian who once said, "One of the saddest things in the world, is to see a train-load of lawyers going over a cliff.....with ONE empty

It just takes all kinds Tom, I myself am a scratch-building, kit-bashing fool. I love the personal skill and effort that it takes me to build something out of "nothing" or some raw starting point. I a

Shawn, Yes the Santa Fe used to have a large-paged paperback book, like 12" X 16", of steam, diesel, frt. & pass. car drawings and photos, that they'd give out for free, through their Public Relations

To all our fellows, Hey,...I'm pushin' to be 60 yrs old. When I was first into model railroading, in the '50's, and "plastics" (shriek!!) began to come into existence, I remember a great discontent, a

Richard Hendrickson wrote: (John) Allen then adopted advanced decrepitude and made it fashionable because his modeling was inclined more to quaintness and caricature than to realism (and in that respe

OK boys, actual freight-car question!! I can't find the appropriate data I seek concerning Andrews trucks. I have various pairs of HO, standard-gauge, Andrews (type) trucks. One set has a "flatish" to

Tony, I understand you have a Phd in metallurgy? Maybe you could answer, or comment on a "dumb ( ? )" question I've often thought about, but never tried or researched? Say, in HO scale, 87.1:1, we phy

Tony & Tim, OK, thanks. I see where I erred, in scaling down only 1 dimension of a 3 dimensional object. Paul Hillman

Tony, HUM!!!??? That just brought up another interesting thought to me. Wouldn't it be more true to scale-weight then, to know the prototype-car's empty weight, divide that by the cube of 87.1, (or so

So basically all model cars should weigh about the same according to length? That's why a 40 ft flatcar would weigh the same as a 40 ft boxcar? Maybe THAT's the reason that one wood, kit-built boxcar

Jim, Well,...some of the formula manipulation results and posted information in this thread, apparently turn out to yield that the scale-weight calculations ARE very close to the NMRA figures for weig

For what it's worth,(and to answer my own question about scale weights versus NMRA weight recommendations), I did a couple of calculations. I calculated 2 HO cars, 1-38ft wood reefer & 1-50ft steel bo

Tom Jones wrote; "It would be great fun to have a car that actually resisted the pulling forces based upon its supposed weight, and that likewise would demonstrate momentum once rolling." ************

Tony Thompson wrote; "As we saw a few days ago, the NMRA weights are not inconsistent with a loaded car." ***************************************************************************** That's my whole

Tim Gilbert wrote; "What is the prototypical weight for a loaded car? Consider the following tons per carload for sundry commodities in 1956" : Wheat 54.52 tons per carload Cotton in Bales 19.92 tons

This is the same thing that the prototype has had to deal with. Now we're getting down to the "nitty-gritty" of the TRUE prototyping of our model railroad cars,..... theory of parts & materials in act

Mike, That WOULD be an interesting little "detail" to put on a freight-car. I think I'll try that just for fun. Once somebody suggested attaching some kind of device to a rail, to make it pull down as

Tom, Actually to me the answer is quite simple, (but then I'm kinda weird some say), because of the general context's of the STMFC's stated purpose and the MANY topics discussed in this group. Everyth

Tom Jones wrote: My focus was more on simulation of scale momentum of models, yours is the faithful creation of models. **************************************************************************** Tom