I'm going to ask what some of you might think is a dumb question but keep in mind that i'm still learning the details of some of these things.

Sometime in the future the group restoring streetcar 390 in Hampton, Va. will need a set of Brill 76e trucks (or Brill 27g depending on what we can get). Barring some miracle that would have us have a set donated we will probably have to have a set fabricated. A fabricated set isn't too much of a problem as 390 will be a static display car only.

Now in the past when Brill built these trucks....let say for the wide gauge New Orleans Perley Thomas cars (5'2 1/2") and for Hampton's 390 (standard gauge 4'8 1/2") i know a
lot of parts would have been common to both. But if i'm correct the bolsters and axles while of the same design would have been different lengths depending on what gauge was used.
I do know wide gauge trucks could be used under a standard gauge car if the wheel sets were pressed to standard gauge. (such as what Seashore did to Baltimore Peterwitt car 6144, 5'4 1/2" to 4' 8 1/2") Matter of fact 390 had the opposite happen. 390 was supposed to be a Baltimore (5' 4 1/2") car. Because the need was so great in 1917 Brill took 6 cars from the Baltimore order and modified the body bolster to fit on standard gauge trucks for Hampton. There is still evidence of this today on 390.

My question is would Brill have made a different casting and mold for the wider gauge when building these trucks? I'm also assuming that the axles would also have to be longer for a wide gauge truck.

The reason i'm asking this is i have access to a wide guage Brill 27g truck i can physically measure and access to Brill plans to a wide gauge 76e. I need to adapt these so i can make drawings for parts if we have a set fabricated for 390. Hence i have to adapt wide gauge measurements to standard and i just want to make sure while the design is the same the only difference would be the length.

On a swing motion truck the truck the bolster does not do much. The body bolster sits on the truck bolster. The truck bolster sits on two sets of leaf springs. The leaf springs set on the spring plank. The spring plank hangs from links that hang from the truck transom. The length of the truck bolster is probably what Brill could fit into the available space.

Also gauge may not be the ruling dimension. Street railway equipment has several different wheel and axle designs available to it, depending on the type of track it was going to run on. Even though the track was 4’ 8 1/2” gauge, the journals centers and axle length can vary. It all has to work together. To design the bolster you would need to have information about all the other parameters that impact the design.

I would suggest you should have the Brill truck catalog pages for the trucks you are planing to use and a copy of the American Electric Railway Engineering Association Manual, or the later ATEA manual, which covers wheel and axle designs for electric railways.

I am tempted to say that only the bolsters and axles "need" to be modified if the car is to be a stationary display and running-gear clearance (and curve performance) are not important.

Seems to me you could just build a new bolster with control dimensions for the 'fits' taken off the ends of the original. Or even just fab up something compatible, using historic fabric for the other 'visible' truck components.

Just remember the 'first rule': if anything has to be modified, make the new stuff fit the historic fabric, not the other way around... even a little.

If it is a static display, how accurate does the truck need to be? E.g. you aren't going to fabricate actual functional motors.

Terms like "76E" and "27G" were more like marketing names than precise specifications. Drawings certainly exist of those trucks. Who has them scanned and accessible is another story. Or just take photos of similar trucks under cars at museums.

Do these trucks need to actually roll on a track, or will this car be strictly stuffed and mounted?

Hi...

Let me explain some things about the Brill trucks i have learned and about 390.
390 was built and delivered with Brill 76e trucks. The trucks had a 4' 6" wheel base.
The biggest difference between a 27g truck and a 76e truck was how the springs were arranged. The bolster ends are also different. Baltimore car 5748 which is at Seashore is a sister car to 390. (390 being the first Baltimore design 13 window car built at Brill and 5748 being the 10th 13 window car built on the same assembly line at the time.) As mentioned the first 6 cars of the Baltimore order were deferred by Brill to the Hampton order because of the need during WWI. Brill later built 6 more cars to replace those near the end of the Baltimore order.(Baltimore had ordered 80 cars) The Baltimore cars had Brill 27g trucks.

There are differences in the variations of the Brill 27 trucks. Early Brill 27 trucks had a more complicated spring set up. On a Brill 27 f truck the end frames are mounted different than they are on a Brill 27g. Brill also had a longer 27 ex which had a 6 foot wheel base for faster running.

When making up a set of construction drawings i only have examples from Baltimore trucks to use. Since 390 was a standard gauge car i will have to adapt what measurements i get to standard gauge. These drawings will be used to cut out parts and assemble a set of trucks for 390. 390 will never be a running car. It won't have motors or any brake parts. Static display only, but when the time comes to mount it on the trucks it may have to be rolled on and off a trailer and rolled into the building that will be built for it. Also the weight of 390 without the trucks is going to be something like 16 tons so i have to allow for what ever is built to be able to handle the weight. My question was more along the lines of is there something i need to be aware of when making up the drawings.

Before drawing parts I think you need to write out a spec. describing the features of the truck you need. One of the challenges the truck designers face was car width. In the older cities the street cars often ran on what had been horse car track. The track centers were often narrow resulting on the new cars having to be narrow to pass on the former horse car track. The challenge for the truck designer was to make a truck narrow enough so it did not stick out from under the sides of the car. 0ne method to achieve this was to use wheels with a deep dish. With a deep dish wheel about a third of the journal box was inside the dish of the wheel and the truck side was right up against the tread of the wheel. Being a street car the tread with may already be half of what a railroad wheel was. The journal may be 4 X 6 rather than 4 1/4 X 8 to narrow the truck up another inch.

The wheel base is usually controlled by the size of the traction motor. It has to fit between the axle and the transom. On a really short wheel base truck, the traction motor is probably hung outboard of the axle. This works for very short turning radii, maybe 40 foot or less. The 76E is an outboard hung traction motor truck.

In fabrication of a replica truck, the truck frame will be the hard part. Lots of details there. If you expect the truck to roll, functional journal boxes, brass, and wheel sets will be required. If you can live with MCB wheel sets, you can probably find 4 1/4 X 8 wheel sets with 33” wheels and base the rest of the design on those wheel sets. That would save a lot of money. Another challenge will be springs. The truck frame and the springs are the most visible parts of the truck. Both leaf and coil springs will be needed. On the 76E truck there were different springs that came into play for different loadings.

There are lots of drawings around of various truck parts. Many companies made these parts for maintenance. But you rarely see the truck frame drawings. This was a part to complicated for most systems to make them selves.

The side frames will be weldments, but will be identical in all measurements to a forged Brill side frame. The same for the bolster. I just want to be sure the same design features except for length would apply for a standard gauge width bolster as they are on a wide gauge one. I would assume any tapered part of the bolster (going from center out to the side frame) would change slightly because of the length.

We have a source for springs (new and used) and can get wheel sets. We have also gotten a quote from Edmonton Radial Railway for journals (they have the Brill patterns for the journals) Since the car would probably only be moved 120 to 150 feet at most (on the trailer, off the trailer and into the building) we might not have brasses made but would use compressed oak well greased. As i've mentioned there will not be any motors or brake parts. But other than that i want the trucks to appear as close as possible to a Brill truck and be able to handle the expected weight loads. We want 390 to appear as if it could run (working lights, doors ,folding steps ,windows ,roll signs and farebox)

I have a set of wide gauge bolsters, 27 MCB I think. The bolster is straight in the center where the center plate goes, then there is a tapered section, then a short straight section. On the wide gauge trucks that outboard straight section is considerable longer. To make the bolsters into standard gauge, we could just cut the outboard straight section shorter. I assume that Brill had an extension that they screwed on to the pattern for each of the different gauges. It was all in the straight outboard section so they did not have to mess with the tapered portion.

Some Baltimore streetcars have truck frames made for a narrower gauge and use very deeply dished wheels. Did the Baltimore and Hampton cars from that same assembly line just have different wheels? Of course, the wheel tread brake shoes had to be hung in a different position and the brake beams were different lengths.
On at least 1 trolley at Baltimore Streetcar Museum, the truck frame can't be lifted off the wheel sets, the frame must be unbolted into separate parts.

Have you contacted the Historical Society of Pennsylvania at http://www.hsp.org ?

See the Abstract below for a description of their collection:
"The J.G. Brill Company and its various incarnations dominated the world of trolley and undercarriage manufacturing for most of its seventy-year history. Based in Philadelphia, Brill was founded in 1868 by a German immigrant and held in family hands well into the 1930s. At its height, The J.G. Brill Company owned plants in six states as well as in Canada and France. The collection consists of approximately 16,000 photographs, 6,000 glass-plate negatives, 10,000 acetate negatives, and thirteen order books, and documents the wide array of products manufactured by Brill. The photographs include interior and exterior views of railroad cars, trolleys, buses, ambulances, and trucks, as well as images of undercarriages, small parts, and seats. The collection also documents the factory grounds at 62nd and Woodland, particularly for World War I. Order books provide information on the quantity and types of items purchased, the companies purchasing them, and their dates of order and delivery."

Also see the 'History of the J.G Brill Company" by Debra Brill, the 3x great granddaughter of the founder, was published in 2001 by Indiana University Press. It has some good builders photos of the trucks, but no detailed drawings.

The Baltimore semi convertible cars (except for both orders of 1919) had Brill 27 trucks (including 5748 which is the lone survivor of 885 Baltimore semis at Seashore) The Hampton cars had Brill 76e trucks. Both Baltimore and Hampton cars had a 4' 6" wheel base and rode on 33" wheels (except for the 1905 and 1907 Baltimore "high speed" semis which had 6' 0" wheel base trucks)

390 in Hampton was supposed to be a Baltimore car (6 were taken from the Baltimore order and shipped to Hampton instead) Its body bolster which was made for a Baltimore car was modified by Brill to take a standard gauge Brill 76e truck.

Thanks...we know about HSP's collection. We got two builders photos of our car from them a while back. We'd like to have someone from our group go there and search thru the records and see what can be found. We know the date and order number which we gave HSP and they found the pictures, but we don't have anything else and hence someone needs to go there in person and do a search.