The long kingpins were actually a safety measure... which obviously didn't work all the time. Normally the truck pivots on a 12" diameter center plate, as can be seen on the far bolster; the near one

One can see the ice bunker drains at the corners of the floor. Dennis Storzek

As luck would have it, I just ran into a photo of one of these cars, taken late in life, awaiting rebuilding with steel sides. Note the added fascia: Dennis Storzek

Nope. Looking at the photo they are decimal inches on the right edge, metric on the left, and the decimal inches decrease in .05" increments. Example: a 16" grab is .184" long in HO, but the available

But they didn't stay that way. Later photos show them with a nominal 1" thick fascia board, which is what I put on the Accurail model. Dennis Storzek

Done for the same reason... If done truly to scale, it would never show under our flat layout lighting. Dennis Storzek

Note this car does NOT have a fascia along the top of the sides; the metal roof laps directly on the car siding. Dennis Storzek

But Tim, the photo of NP 8029 is also of a new car. The only difference is 1) the gloss level of the paint, 2) the angle of the lighting. I have often suspected that some builders photos were taken of

I concur. Square edge boards rarely lay up perfectly even, which is the whole reason for the beveled corners that make a visible V, or other decorative bead. The 3/4 view has really strong highlights;

And, since most were patented, the designs became more and more outlandish in the effort to avoid existing patents. This one is particularly goofy, and luckily we have views from two different angles.

Interestingly, the original photo showing the new car shows it is a 40 ton car; must have been built with older trucks reclaimed from scrapped cars. In this latest photo, that capacity has shrunk to j

Speculation, yes, but I tend to doubt that by this point in time the railroads specified the details of the vendor supplied products... they would order what the vendor offered. Anything else would be

Yeah but... we're not talking about the size of the door here, but rather the relative size of the panels that make up the door. It's easy to see why the stamped steel ends on the USRA cars were three

For reference here is a pic of a spear point used for drilling glass: This is a carbide tipped tool, the tip is wider than the shank, but doesn't have to be. Also, for use in plastic and resin the ell

Actually, the method I described, stoning a diagonal flat on the shank of a broken drill mimics the shape of a hypodermic needle without the hole. It drills soft materials OK, but takes a lot of turns

Yeah, New England Rail Service (the people who made all the wall sections for modifying Rivarossi Pullman car models) had a kit, but it's off the market now, as far as I know. Dennis Storzek

I donno, Tichy's PB wire is pretty hard, much harder than the DA brass wire. I figured I'd suggest it since it could also be used to make the replacement grabs. But I see guitar strings are available

Actually, in this case the 9'-0" auto cars were a derivative of the early 20's boxcars of the same dimensions, and shared the same fishbelly underframe. Clark, what happened to the door hangers? Don V

Most of the information you quoted is aimed at users who use the drills in machine tools. The material is typically chosen for its wear characteristics... But modelers don't wear drills out, they brea

Google "number drill size chart". That will give you the size of number drills in thousandths of an inch, which is the same units of measure used by most hobby wire suppliers. Most pre-forrmed HO grab