Good Friends,
As I contemplated how to add the piping and brake levers (AB
brakes, as upgraded) to my small collection of Ulrich GS gondolas,
I thought to look in my collection of Gregg Train Shed
Cyclopedias. I didn't find any help with the piping and rod
arrangement (poop!), but to my surprise found a builder's photo of
the GN car with the heap shield ends. It is on page 239 of the
1940 Car Builders' Cyclopedia, or Gregg reprint No. 5 with the
same pagination.
The GN car is numbered 75899, from series 75500-75999 (Pressed
Steel Car Co., 7-37). It is similar to the Ulrich cars, with two
major differences. The Ulrich models depict (somewhat crudely, but
consider the model's age) the proprietary Enterprise link
arrangement. This tends to hide the sloped part of the lower car
body. The GN car appears to have simple chains winding around a
rod, making the visible part of the winding mechanism appear more
delicate and opening up the sloped area to view. The second
difference is that the GN prototype has a brake gear box and its
brake platform is mounted below the lower of the two horizontal
stiffening ribs on the end. The Ulrich model has the brake
platform mounted above that rib, and it has an upright rod and
wheel. The Ulrich GN model thus doesn't look much like its
supposed prototype (barring a lot of work with a Dremel). The
Ulrich cars with flat ends and the staff brake are much closer to
SP G-50-9 through G-50-12 from the 1920s, which is really what I
want. The GN car can stay in the hobby store display case.
That still doesn't solve how the brake rods and piping ran. I
wonder if there is a wreck photo of one of these cars tipped over.
Any ideas?
Yours Aye,
Garth Groff
