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Tungsten & Depleted Uranium (was Scale Coupler boxes)
Andy Carlson
22 years ago a friend was engaged in making a N scale
engine for challenging the title of most N scale cars
pulled by a single locomotive. The then champ was a
kitbash of 2 GE U30CG wide bodies with 16 wheel drive.
That locomotive was weighted with depleted uranium
(the builder was a retired Nasa engineer) and could
pull 400+ cars, I recall. To make my friends N&W John
Henry heavy, I supplied a big chunck of tungsten,
which is about 1/2 again more dense than lead, and a
bit more than the depleted uranium. The finished loco
weighed 1 1/2 pounds (this is N scale) but never got a
chance for a pull off. Politics by the current record
holder dictated that these contests served no purpose,
so he retired the loco "undefeated". The tungsten had
to be broken into pieces.
-Andy Carlson
Ojai Ca
--- Patrick Wider <pwider@...> wrote:
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engine for challenging the title of most N scale cars
pulled by a single locomotive. The then champ was a
kitbash of 2 GE U30CG wide bodies with 16 wheel drive.
That locomotive was weighted with depleted uranium
(the builder was a retired Nasa engineer) and could
pull 400+ cars, I recall. To make my friends N&W John
Henry heavy, I supplied a big chunck of tungsten,
which is about 1/2 again more dense than lead, and a
bit more than the depleted uranium. The finished loco
weighed 1 1/2 pounds (this is N scale) but never got a
chance for a pull off. Politics by the current record
holder dictated that these contests served no purpose,
so he retired the loco "undefeated". The tungsten had
to be broken into pieces.
-Andy Carlson
Ojai Ca
--- Patrick Wider <pwider@...> wrote:
Back at Boeing, I know an engineer who has a very
large chunk of tungsten on his desk as
a gag. Unsuspecting people come along, curiosity
overcomes them, and more often than
not, they try to pick it up. It's a riot to see the
look on their faces when they can barely
budge the thing. And God forbid they should
accidently drop it on their foot. The stuff
would make ideal hidden weights for flat cars. So
would depleted uranium.