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 Post subject: Cabeese without trucks?
PostPosted: Sun Apr 08, 2018 9:30 am 

Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2004 11:26 am
Posts: 4642
Location: Maine
Just curious - and there may be an obvious answer which has flown over my bald head. Why do we find so many "saved" cabooses and relatively important rail cars, sitting in someone's lot without trucks under them? How difficult is it to find matching trucks in serious preservation attempts?

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Last edited by Richard Glueck on Sun Apr 08, 2018 10:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

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 Post subject: Re: Cabeese without trucks?
PostPosted: Sun Apr 08, 2018 9:56 am 
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Joined: Sun Jun 27, 2010 12:24 am
Posts: 298
Location: H2O-town, CT
Most people who have bought them have no plans on running them on rail again, they are a stationary "cabin" or house or whatever. No need to buy pieces of rail and ties to set it on.

Second, it's cheaper to move. One truck to move the caboose and no second to move the trucks.

Third, possibly save even more money (more like get a return on your purchase) by letting the railroad or broker keep the trucks and sell them to someone else. Essentially they're deducted from the purchase of the caboose (or any other railcar)


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 Post subject: Re: Cabeese without trucks?
PostPosted: Sun Apr 08, 2018 8:37 pm 

Joined: Sat Oct 02, 2004 5:48 pm
Posts: 380
Location: Hickory, NC
How hard is it? Harder than you might think...

When our museum found a wooden cupola Southern Railway caboose two years ago (built 1924), we were lucky enough to have a pair of archbar trucks from an old freight car that we had purchased years back. However, they are still not correct, as they lack the leaf springs.

For us, an alternative is/was to use a more modern pair of trucks from a baywindow caboose. But even though the leaf springs have the correct look, the frames are cast and have roller bearings.

So for us, it has been give and take in that department.

Matt Bumgarner
Alexander Chapter NRHS


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 Post subject: Re: Cabeese without trucks?
PostPosted: Sun Apr 08, 2018 8:59 pm 

Joined: Thu Sep 22, 2011 4:29 pm
Posts: 1899
Location: Youngstown, OH
Kovalchick has a small mountain of plain bearing trucks at their yard in Burnham, PA. An option if looking for period correct trucks.


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 Post subject: Re: Cabeese without trucks?
PostPosted: Mon Apr 09, 2018 10:16 am 

Joined: Sat Jan 31, 2009 4:12 am
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Location: cheyenne
Finding wooden trucks for the UP NCS, CA and CA-1 cabooses is hard, they were re used on later build cabooses and are very rare. We anticipate building a batch of static dummy trucks in the future for the 4 (so far) wood cabooses that High Plains Railroad Preservation have.

Mike Pannell


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 Post subject: Re: Cabeese without trucks?
PostPosted: Mon Apr 09, 2018 12:40 pm 

Joined: Sat Feb 06, 2010 9:29 am
Posts: 318
I would think making a set of wooden trucks, or arch bars wouldn't be too difficult...
Most of the metal parts are pieces of steel flat bar stock, etc... You only lack cast axel boxes, which could be fabbed from steel plate or more expensively milled from a block of steel....
Same for cast bolster parts, most of which can be fabbed from various parts like channels and welded together...
I've taken a few arch bars apart and rebuilt them...not overly difficult... The wood beams from a wooden truck might be a challenge, depending on the type of wood used...


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 Post subject: Re: Cabeese without trucks?
PostPosted: Mon Apr 09, 2018 1:47 pm 

Joined: Thu Aug 26, 2004 2:50 pm
Posts: 2815
Location: Northern Illinois
To my way of thinking, it would be easier to build replicas than "dummy" trucks. These things weren't rocket science... if one good truck could be found, all the cast parts could be replicated, and the wood parts would be relatively easy. Far easier to use a custom foundry like Cattail to make castings using the originals as patterns than to try to make mock-ups from wood, and the results would be much more durable. Pieced together wood mock-ups will fall apart in the weather within years, even in the dry Wyoming climate.

I recall one of the museums in the Pacific Northwest built a pair of replica trucks for an NP caboose... Anyone know who? I wonder of they have patterns for boxes, etc.?

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 Post subject: Re: Cabeese without trucks?
PostPosted: Wed Apr 11, 2018 5:41 pm 

Joined: Thu Aug 26, 2004 2:50 pm
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Location: Northern Illinois
Bump. Really disappointed that no one has provided the name of the group that built replica trucks for what I believe was an NP caboose. Of course, I've not been able to find it via web search either. What I did find is this page, which contains some familiar names:

http://www.febt.org/Restore/16.html

Not quite the same trucks, I'm sure the U.P. cars had cast pedestals, but likely similar in capacity. The fact remains, for the amount of work to replicate the cast parts in wood, it's not much more work to build foundry patterns, and end up with functional parts.

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 Post subject: Re: Cabeese without trucks?
PostPosted: Wed Apr 11, 2018 8:30 pm 

Joined: Wed Jun 26, 2013 7:20 pm
Posts: 211
Quote:
Far easier to use a custom foundry like Cattail to make castings using the originals as patterns

I thought patterns have to be oversize to allow for shrinkage during the casting process, so if you use an original part as a pattern, the actual cast part would be smaller???


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 Post subject: Re: Cabeese without trucks?
PostPosted: Wed Apr 11, 2018 8:37 pm 

Joined: Thu Sep 22, 2011 4:29 pm
Posts: 1899
Location: Youngstown, OH
If you want to cast freight car sideframes and bolsters, Cattail cannot help you as they cast in iron not steel and I don't think they can make castings that large.

Freight car truck patterns are rather complex including multiple core boxes. It would probably be better to have a company such as Humtown Pattern just 3D print a sand mold instead of making patterns.

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 Post subject: Re: Cabeese without trucks?
PostPosted: Wed Apr 11, 2018 9:13 pm 

Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2013 12:36 am
Posts: 594
Location: Anchorage, Alaska
These are arch bar trucks for a narrow gauge Carter box car, but the photos give an idea of what can be done if you really want to.

http://spcrr.org/NARFGrantWheels.html


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 Post subject: Re: Cabeese without trucks?
PostPosted: Wed Apr 11, 2018 9:30 pm 

Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2016 10:40 pm
Posts: 386
Location: San Francisco, CA
Dennis, Richard and all,

The narrow gauge, streetcar and others have built trucks for restoring cars. The extra twenty inches in the frames can't be all that difficult to deal with.

Passenger cars with six wheel trucks will the biggest challenge. The can weigh up to twenty tons or more.

It doesn't matter if a caboose in a persons back yard sits on a pile of cross ties. But any museum restoration worth its salt will need real trucks under the cars!

A while back they found that an Oregon Electric passenger car at WRM had an iron wheel set in it. So the truck was removed and the iron wheel set placed under a box car and a steel wheel set turned and placed under the passenger car. Yes, trucks are a serious part of a restoration.

Ted Miles, WRM Member


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 Post subject: Re: Cabeese without trucks?
PostPosted: Wed Apr 11, 2018 11:12 pm 

Joined: Thu Aug 26, 2004 2:50 pm
Posts: 2815
Location: Northern Illinois
Rick Rowlands wrote:
If you want to cast freight car sideframes and bolsters, Cattail cannot help you as they cast in iron not steel and I don't think they can make castings that large.

Freight car truck patterns are rather complex including multiple core boxes. It would probably be better to have a company such as Humtown Pattern just 3D print a sand mold instead of making patterns.


Rick, he is talking about wood beam pedestal type trucks similar to these (couldn't find a UP picture).

Image

The most complex part would be the journal boxes, and at one time they were traditionally cast iron.

As to shrinkage, sure they shrink, but so what. Use 5X9 boxes as patterns and adapt them to 4-1/4 X 8 bearings, or 4-1/4 X 8 boxes as patterns and adapt them to 3-1/2 X 7 bearings. It has to beat building eight wood mock-ups.

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 Post subject: Re: Cabeese without trucks?
PostPosted: Thu Apr 12, 2018 8:37 am 

Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2004 11:26 am
Posts: 4642
Location: Maine
Rick, the pile of scrap trucks, if they are still available, is probably another RYPN resource that needed to be brought to the general attention.
Thank you for posting.

Dick

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 Post subject: Re: Cabeese without trucks?
PostPosted: Thu Apr 12, 2018 12:02 pm 

Joined: Sat Feb 06, 2010 9:29 am
Posts: 318
Just going to throw this out there....
In the pictures of the truck piles, you might note the pictures have at least three trucks with separable Axel boxes which could be reused on a replica project...
The truck under the yellow one on top of the pile definitely is one...

In looking at the pictures of the wood framed trucks, I can see that most of the cast parts shown could easily be fabricated from steel plate and flat bar stock.... Might actually be cheaper too...


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