Our Historical Society will be moving a 1900's wooden passener car shortly by truck. I would appreciate some information regarding the approximate wieght of such a car and how much the trucks might weight. Any information would be appreciated.
Don Grant

roxb@earthlink.net

Although I'm sure that you can get some helpful advise from the group as you asked the question, they can give you a lot more help if you would just give them a few details about the car in question. Is it a coach, baggage car, sleeper, office car, or what? How long is it. The weight of all of these will vary, and knowing the type would help others help you. The name of the railroad and number/name might lead to exact info.



rdgoldfede@aol.com

> Our Historical Society will be moving a
> 1900's wooden passener car shortly by truck.
> I would appreciate some information
> regarding the approximate wieght of such a
> car and how much the trucks might weight.
> Any information would be appreciated.
> Don Grant

In general, wooden coaches with steel underframe and trucks weigh about 80,000 lbs. Of this, about 30,000 lbs. is for the trucks. That said, the railroad using the car in revenue service would have more precise figures if those are still available.


wrj494@aol.com

> Our Historical Society will be moving a
> 1900's wooden passener car shortly by truck.

Could you share with us some of the specifics of this project? (There is some rhyme I once heard in a Spencer Tracy movie that makes the following sound nifty - can't remember it right now)

Who - What group is moving the car?
What - What car is being moved?
When - When is the move scheduled?
Where - Where is the car located now? Where it is going?
Why - Why does the car have to be moved?
How - How will the car be moved? How much will it cost?

-- This information would certainly be appreciated by the readers of the interchange, as well as the readers of the Briefs. Let me know if you want any help with the latter.

Tom


rrhistorian@hotmail.com

If you haven't already - make sure you check out Silk Road Transport, Arkport, NY. (major transit car haulers for Amerail at Hornell NY) They've got quite specialized equipment for rail car moving. If you're lucky, and patient, you can sometimes get really nice rates on a backhaul when they are normally returning empty back toward NY. Web site and contacts is http://www.silkroadtrans.com/. They moved a wood passenger car for one of my clients a couple years ago. Unlike some trucking firms, they do understand railcars quite well.

randygustafson@stoneconsulting.com

> Could you share with us some of the
> specifics of this project? (There is some
> rhyme I once heard in a Spencer Tracy movie
> that makes the following sound nifty - can't
> remember it right now)

> Who - What group is moving the car?
> What - What car is being moved?
> When - When is the move scheduled?
> Where - Where is the car located now? Where
> it is going?
> Why - Why does the car have to be moved?
> How - How will the car be moved? How much
> will it cost?

> -- This information would certainly be
> appreciated by the readers of the
> interchange, as well as the readers of the
> Briefs. Let me know if you want any help
> with the latter.

> Tom
Tom,
The car that the Newtown Square Historical and Preservation Society is moving is a PK class PRR 1902 wooden coach #1444. It now resides at the Ford Museum at Greenfield, Mi and we are moving it to our museum at Newtown Square, Pa. Silk Transport will do the moving for us. The move will take place on April 28th. It will compliment our 1895 PRR freight station museum, a PRR caboose, a box car and a 0-6-0 steam engine.
Don Grant


roxb@earthlink.net

>The weight of a car body is variable depending on when and where it was built and how many modifications were made over the years. Sometimes a lot of additional bracing was added to wooden car bodies.

You can weigh it yourself very easily if you can jack the body.

Rent a calibrated load cell (strain gauge). Place the load cell between one jack and the car body. Raise one end of the car enough so it is supported entirely by the jacks. Raise both sides the same distance.

Make measurements on all four corners of the car and total them. Weight on the four corners can vary depending on location of underfloor equipment.

These load cells are extremely accurate. You should be able to get a figure accurate to within one hundred pounds.

At the Western Railway Museum we weighed a fully-equipped wooden interurban body at 21,750
pounds. The lightest corner weighed 5150 pounds and the heaviest weighed 5600 pounds.



fkrock@pacbell.net

> our 0-6-0 steam engine.

Don,

What 0-6-0 would that be?

Sounds like an interesting display. Good luck with the coach move.

Regards,
Jim Robinson

If you can't rent a load cell, just put a gauge on your enerpac portapower. Find the surface area of your cylinder, and multiply that by the reading on the gauge. This is how I weighed the parts of our big engine. You should be able to jack the car up under the coupler pocket on each end, take your reading then add the two numbers together. Make sure the center pin isn't locked to the truck so that you lift the body up only, unless you are moving the car with trucks on.

rick@todengine.org

It will compliment our 1895
> PRR freight station museum, a PRR caboose, a
> box car and a 0-6-0 steam engine.
> Don Grant

So that's who owns it...

I used to pass this equipment here and there and woner who owned it. Looks like it'll be a nice display when finished.

Jeff Lisowski
West Chester, Pa

unfunkyufo76@hotmail.com

You might want to be careful jacking on the coupler pockets on some of these old cars, Rick.

dave

irondave@bellsouth.net

Hi Don,
I helped lift an old wooden car body a few years ago, 1880's vintage, now in the NSRM collections at Bolder City Nevada. No trucks/couplers, strictly a car body (losts of bird poop etc). I think this is the car Dan Markoff is duplicating. My notes of the day are somewhere in storage, As I recall the hook weight was 12,000 lbs. and we probably had 1,000-1,500 lbs of rigging and spreader bar. With trucks and couplers I would easly double the car weight. We were also moving a steam locomotive that day, so we had a good size crane. The hydraulic cylinder PSI times square inch area method mentioned in other posts works great and will get you close to actual. Make sure you can trust the guage you will use. 100-200 PSI on a large diameter piston will make a big difference on weight. One more note on the cylinder method, wood members probably will not support point load weight, you may want to use some steel to spread out the contact area and prevent damage to the car body.

good luck,
C W

cwcraven@earthlink.net

> Tom,
> The car that the Newtown Square Historical
> and Preservation Society is moving is a PK
> class PRR 1902 wooden coach #1444.

I have observed many instances where interchange participants make unnecessarily vague requests. Providing specific information about projects not only helps in finding information, but it also helps to make contacts beyond the board.

I didn’t know what car was being discussed, (I as well as at least a few others thought this was the recently discussed NKP car in Ohio) the best I could provide would be a guess that would have been within 20,000 lbs. of the actual weight – in other words not useful at all. Knowing the both the railroad and the type of car not only allowed me to make a better approximation of the weight, but also to find specific information about your car. More often than not, the quality of the information provided on the interchange would be improved if we all took the time to be specific.

Here are the weights of the PK class, without trucks, with a description of the different variants. All of this was found from the PRR passenger car diagrams on prr.railfan.net

Globe ventilators, Open Platforms, Old Style Steps, 66 persons 60,000 lbs
Globe ventilators, Open Platforms, New Style Steps, 66 persons 60,000 lbs
Drop sash ventilators, Open Platform, 64 persons 59,000 lbs
Drop sash ventilators, Narrow Vestibules, 64 persons 63,000 lbs
Trailing sash ventilators, Wide Vestibules, 26.5" Side Doors, 60 persons 70,000 lbs
New ventilation, Wide Vestibules, 29" Side Doors, 60 persons 70,300 lbs
Standard ventilation, Wide Vestibules, 29" side doors, 64 persons 85,000 lbs

In regards to the weight of the trucks, the website also has an extensive collection of truck diagrams, which include their information about their weight. The link is provided below.

I hope that this information is of some assistance.

Best,
Tom Cornillie



PRR Passenger Truck diagrams

rrhistorian@hotmail.com