The other day we saw some beautiful troop transports cars from Railworks on the forum, so I took some pictures of the ones I have from Walthers-I need to obtain more. When setting them for the photos I noticed how close these car couple together, I have seen it before but this time I really studied them and it is amazing how close they are with diaphgrams.
This is on a 28 inch curve, note how close they are and the cars don't derail, they stay on track even through the curves and close coupled.
Hardly any space between them, then I began to wonder if Walthers can do this with troop cars why can't they along with Rapido and Broadway Limited do the same thing with the regular passenger cars, instead we have this gap between coaches that is unrealistic.
It does make you think if they can engineer the troop cars to be so close coupled they should be able to do the same with their beautiful passenger cars.
Any thoughts.
Robert Sylvester
Newberry-Columbia Line, SC
Looks like the distance from the end of car to the truck bolster is much shorter than on a regular passenger car. That, combined with the overall shorter length allows for the closer coupling and nice appearance on your 28 inch radius curves. Can't do that with a full length properly scaled Passenger car. The overhang becomes much more of a concern.
Ray
That is true they are shorter, many or most of these military troop carriers were converted box cars thus making them shorter in length than standard passenger cars, still I wish there was a way to improve the close cuppling of passenger cars with the diaphgrams. My brass cars have Precision Scale diaphgrams which are very soft rubber bellows type with a brass stricker plate and they do fine on a 28 inch curve, maybe it's the weight and the fact that these diaphgrams, seriously are very soft an pliable.
They really close the gap between cars and they take the curves well.
These are samples of my Pennsy cars.
Newberry-Columbia, SC