On Apr 14, 2020, at 10:00 PM, Dennis Storzek <destorzek@...> wrote:

On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 03:33 PM, spsalso wrote:

I agree that the wheelbase length I got is very strange.  If someone would care to examine the (American Smelting) photo and tell me where I went wrong, I'd surely like to hear.  I would prefer to be wrong, because it's the simplest solution.

It was a simple case of measuring the length of a known dimension (half of the IL) and measuring the wheelbase length in the photo, and doing a ratio.

I went about it a different way... I downloaded the high res TIF, blew the area up, and reasoning that at that distance the adjacent hopper car is essentially the same distance from the camera, simply used a caliper to compare the wheelbase to the T section Bettendorf trucks on the hopper. They are essentially the same. Possible explanation for your results: 1) what you thought was the center wasn't, or 2) the gon is 40 feet long rather than 46.

Dennis Storzek

Guys

How about using the 33” wheel as the scaling element.   If you measure off the center of the journal to the outside of the wheel that establishes your 16 1/2 “ and perspective errors should be way less than using undetermined half length of the car body.

There were many types of “Fox” pressed steel (hardly sheet metal) trucks.

Charlie Vlk

 

Charlie,

I usually use the process you describe (if I can't get a car number, etc.), but I didn't like it for this because the picture gets pretty fuzzy when it's blown up that much, and it's kinda hard to get accuracy.

But.

I did it anyway.  And, yes, the truck wheelbase comes in around 5 1/2 feet.  Which is remindful of the dimension that Dennis came up with by a different method.

Well, well, says I.

Contemplating on all this, I thought:  "What if the inside length wasn't 40'-ish?"

So I went backwards from the truck wheelbase to get the IL.  Which comes up at about 34'.  In that case, I could note that Southern Pacific had a couple of gon series with that IL.  Nothing shows up for UP, that I can see.  But...........

In other words, if the truck wheelbase is "standard", which it appears to be when compared to the neighboring truck, then it would seem likely that the car was shorter than the typical 40'.

Interestinger and interestinger.


Ed

Edward Sutorik