Jon Miller, I seem to have a non-working email address for you. Please send me a direct email so I can get your new one. The one I have is an "inow" addy and may be -very- old. :-( - Jim B.

Matt, That's true ... but when the spring is considerably compressed then isn't it the -distance- in the number of turns that comes in to play more than simply the number turns? I do know this - when

Tony, Good points. What I do is to put the cut end of the now shortened truck spring against the head of the truck screw - so the business end of the spring is still the original shape. Rather than su

Johannes, Although you wouldn't immediately think that less pressure on the truck springs would make a car roll better ... further contemplation leads me to believe that trucks that don't swivel/rock

Hello all, Well it appears that it was, after all, 'just' that the springs holding the trucks against the bolsters (shouldered brass truck screws) were the problem. One of these cars has equalized tru

Hi, I just now checked the alignment of the wheels - all are square on the axles and centered in the axles and aligned with each other. I'm still at a loss about these cars ... What I have decided to

Hi, I've been enjoying the Barriger pics being linked. To me they appear to be from the 20's or earlier - with a few that might be from the 30's. Do I have that right? Is there any way to get the date

Hi, So I've got a couple of new (to me) cars that I -really- want to use (they both fit TTs definition of "signature freight cars") regularly - and they are both having problems with derailing on both

Hi, I'm a little surprised by the fact that no one has mentioned this (this time around) ... There were definitely two 'languages' regarding a lot of the terminology in use by railroaders. Specificall

Hi, I'm looking at upgrading a significant percentage of my HO scale STMFC era freight car fleet by adding cut levers. Did the RRs specify the style/brand of cut levers on the cars they ordered or was

Hi, Excellent car - thank you Tangent. Excellent review - thank you Tony. Regrettably I have very little need for this particular car/configuration. I can use them for run thru traffic but we do not h

Hi, So I have some -excellent- real wood, scale, running board material and I want to use them on some of my models. To get the concept of what I want to achieve see: https://donstrack.smugmug.com/Uta

Hi, Every once in a while we see cars that are labeled "Do Not Hump" - often with some lettering on a white background attached to a tack board but also, every once in a while, just marked in chalk on

Dave, Thanks for this ... and by browsing thru the FILES area of the list I RE-discovered that there are a lot of different analyses of the basic freight car frequency ... including one for "just box

Hi, I've used both the HiTech real rubber hoses and plastic hoses. They both look 'pretty good' as is. The plastic hoses tend to take paint (I use acrylics) a -little- easier than the HiTech (in my ex

Jim, I don't doubt your numbers or references ... but I think that what I picked up on during Tony's clinic at BAPM on Saturday is that "20,000 cars" was not a huge percentage of the freight car fleet

DOH!!! I went to this group's page and it seems to imply that how to questions are on topic. Correct? - Jim B.

Hi, Most of the posts to this group are directed at the details of the prototype for the era. Are posts that discuss the methods used to MODEL the prototype for the era OK, tolerated, or "off topic" a

Hi, So I went looking for images on the web of "Tony's Signature Freight Cars" examples ... and went back to the following page http://www.steamerafreightcars.com/gallery/boxautosmain.html which is, p

Tim, Or were you saying that the number 18 -is- a ratio and it is 18:1? That seems more likely? - Jim B.