I was going through my closet and found three forgotten Walthers kits of those huge 76' cryo reefers that date from the early 90s. I wanted to swap out the plastic wheelsets for metal. The plastic wheels are measuring out as 33" wheels, but I'm skeptical that they had proper size wheels in the kit in the first place. At the same time, they are excess height and I know sometimes the big and tall cars sport smaller wheels for clearance reasons. The rule of thumb I was taught for modern was 100 tons = 36" wheels, except for intermodal.
So, does anyone know what size these guys are supposed to have? Fingers crossed its 36" because I have 24 pairs of 36" and no 33" on hand!
What do the load limit and light weight values marked on the side of the car total? Would a full load of frozen fries total 100 ton?
You can find a bunch of proto pictures here: http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/rsList.aspx?id=JRSX&cid=30
They look like 36 inch to me.
Of course the other issue will be what does changing the wheel diameter do for your coupler heights?
The printing on these weren't the best and two of the three are undecorated, but the ORER lists them as 286,000 pound capacity, so that's a whole lot of fries inside. I haven't assembled them yet and I don't know how the coupler height would change. Its only a 1.5 inch height difference between a car riding on 33 vs 36, right? I probably wouldn't even notice in the end. If the coupler's off, I suppose its just time for underset shanks.
I don't think the 286,000 is the capacity; I believe that is the rail loading. The way it has been explained to me is that the light weight of the car plus the weight of the load (the load limit) cannot be more than the rail loading. In any case, it is a bunch of fries.
If you look at the pictures in the link I posted, you'll find that there are several end views of the cars, and this is where you'd normally find the wheel information. Unfortunately, the (model) railroaders had to do their weathering thing and the information is unreadable.
But based on the 286,000 number, I'd say 36" wheels should be okay.
I know there was a MR or RMC article or review of these cars, and they normally make note if the wheel diameters supplied with the models are correct or not. Unfortunately, I don't remember where I saw the article.
A further bit if info...according to the Magazine Index there was an article in the January 2004 issue of Mainline Modeler by Clyde Queen Jr./Nicholas Muff about Simplot Cryogenic Railcars. Nicholas Muff usually did drawings for Mainline, so maybe you can find that info there. I know I have that issue around here someplace, but darned if I can find it. Maybe another forum packrat has the issue and can see what the article says.
I went ahead and assembled one of them with the 36" wheels. It doesn't look "off" and the coupler is the correct height. Whole thing seems sort of moot now!
Thanks for the helping me think out loud