Hi All,
I've decided that HO is not what I am looking for and am moving over to large scale, well semi large scale. Gn15 to be exact so my buildings/people etc will be in G scale while my critters and rolling stock for the most part will be narrow gauge industrial stuff.
Does anybody know if there are any web sites that have working drawings for late 19th early 20th century rolling stock? I've been unemployed for over a year now so I can't subscribe to Garden Railways just yet, I did hovever download the drawings for the 1:22.5 drop bottom hopper.
My current need (aside from a job) is for a 1:22.5 boxcar. The project I am trying to make is 2'x4' ball clay mining layout and I wanted to put a standard guage car at a loading dock. I'm not looking for ready to run I really want to learn how to scratch build what I need.
Tom - Fredericksburg, Va
If you're after standard gauge plans, your best bet is back issues of Model Railroader or other HO-scale magazines. Then enlarge them by 386% to get to 1:22.5. Drawings in 1:22.5 are rare enough, simply because of the size needed. Drawings of standard gauge equipment are rarer still (non-existent?). That, or dig out your HO scale scale rule, and get a 1:22.5 scale rule as well. Just measure from the HO drawing, then use the 1:22.5 ruler to lay things out. (Saves the expense of copying to large format.)
BTW, 1:22.5 (standard gauge) is called Gauge 3 and/or Scale II (scale 2). I'd hesitate to call them "popular," but they do enjoy a small following--much more limited on this side of the Atlantic. Still, you may be able to find trucks or at least wheels if you look around. Here's a link to Barry Bogg's work. He's a modeler down in Texas who has quite an extensive indoor 1:22.5 railroad with both standard and narrow gauge. He'd probably be able to help you in terms of resources.
http://www.frolin.net/cwrr/data/std-ga.html
Later,
K
Hi K,
Thanks for the reply... I'm not having a whole lot of luck in any scale. I did find a great example of an 1879 Haskell & Barker wooden boxcar here:
http://www.mnhs.org/preserve/conservation/reports/box_car.pdf
Would be perfect for what I am after, too bad I don't know any of the measurments.
Tom
Neat prototype! I love the old stuff.
Going from the photos (or at least what can be guessed by when I blow up the image and try to decipher the markings on the side), I'd put this car at around 28' long, and probably around 8' 6" wide.
That's from the markings on the photo on the last page, which give the car's inside length, width, and height (which appears to read around 27', 7' something wide, and 6' something tall from the top of the floor to the ceiling.)
That's very much in line with similar standard gauge cars of that era. If you can find a copy of John White's "The American Railroad Freight Car," you'll find lots of drawings of early rolling stock. Not all of them have measurements on them, but often they give measurements in the written descriptions from which you can determine other measurements. E-mail me off list if you can't find a copy. (Alas, Google Books has White's Passenger Car book digitized, but not his freight book. You may check Google Books for other books that cover rolling stock of that era, though.)
kstrong Neat prototype! I love the old stuff. Going from the photos (or at least what can be guessed by when I blow up the image and try to decipher the markings on the side), I'd put this car at around 28' long, and probably around 8' 6" wide. That's from the markings on the photo on the last page, which give the car's inside length, width, and height (which appears to read around 27', 7' something wide, and 6' something tall from the top of the floor to the ceiling.) That's very much in line with similar standard gauge cars of that era. If you can find a copy of John White's "The American Railroad Freight Car," you'll find lots of drawings of early rolling stock.
That's very much in line with similar standard gauge cars of that era. If you can find a copy of John White's "The American Railroad Freight Car," you'll find lots of drawings of early rolling stock.
Hey K,
Thanks, for what it is worth I contacted the Minnesota Historical Society and they passed along my request for some information to the Mill City Museum Tech to see if he could get some measurements for me. So we will see, they did pass along two more photos that shows the bracing they had to put in place to fix a poor re-roofing job someone did. They said they fixed that and it is back up to snuff.
I'll look for those books.
If you get ahold of a book called ' A Century + Ten of D&RGW narrow gauge Freight Cars' by Robert Sloan, there are lots of drawings in it that give all of the full size dimensions. Just convert to the scale that you are working in.
Ron
Great reference, and it was recently reprinted (and updated), available from BHI Rail Publications. Alas it's not necessarily all that valuable if you're looking for standard gauge prototypes. In terms of construction of narrow gauge cars, it's fantastic, even if you're not modeling the D&RGW. They've got some early stuff from some of the major carbuilders which was similar (identical) to the early stuff on other narrow gauge lines.
Another great reference, especially for c. 1890 standard gauge technology is "Railway Car Construction," which was originally published in 1892, and reprinted in 1899 by the Orange Empire Railway Museum. It's chock full of diagrams and drawings that show pretty much every aspect of railway car technology of that era.
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