Hi Chuck!
No, I never bothered adding those details to my hoppers - most of mine are pretty basic Athearn, Accurail, Varney, and Bowser kits, along with a few r-t-r hoppers from Proto. I also have one made from what was apparently a very old Westerfield kit.
The TH&B cars that I'm doing were originally a project by a local modeller, who wrote a well illustated article in RMC, on turning an Accurail hopper into a TH&B channel-sided car.
While he did a nice job, it seemed that the Stewart (now Bowser) channel-side hopper would have been a better starting point. I'm doing only 12 of them, and I doubt very much that the other 40-or-so hoppers I have on-hand will ever get any additional details...at one time, I considered re-doing the grabirions with wire ones, but that project has only gotten off the ground for some covered hoppers (already an anomally in the late '30s).Most of my flatcars have drop-type sidesills, so no brake gear is visible, and likewise for at least some of my gondolas. The others, along with boxcars and reefers, get the brake gear and brake rigging, but seldom much in the way of piping...usually just that for the retainer.
I do try to be somewhat more thorough with passenger cars, but a lot of the piping would be hidden by the other under-car details anyway.
Wayne
Wayne,
Did you model the levers, hangers and rods on the underside of your hopper? Think you and I had a discussion of such parts one time, but not the specific arrangement. I finally found, through assistance from someone on main@RealSTMFC.groups.io, a diagram showing the arrangement of these parts under a twin hopper of early 20th cent. vintage (approx. my modeling period of the 1920s).
-Chuck Greene
banjobenne1Looking for instructions (esp. drawings) for KC brakes underside of freight cars. Thank you.
Ed has pretty-much covered the piping, and Kevin has taken care of the basic brake rigging.so I'll simply add some photos.
Depending on how much detail you want, it can be pretty simple...I don't usually bother too much with the majority of the prototypical piping, as much of it would be visible only if I were to have regular roll-overs of my rolling stock.This is a modified Train Miniature boxcar, with some added brake gear...
...same car (with almost no piping)...
While the scratchbuilt boxcar car, below, has AB brakes rather than KCs...
...I decided to do a fairly complete job on the piping, even though the majority of it will not be visible when the car is on the layout...
A lot of hopper cars used KD-type brakes, due to the limited space for brake gear under the B-end slope sheets. The KD system separated the brake cylinder from AB valve and the air reservoir of the KC system. I've built a number of such hoppers by cutting the brake cylinder from Tichy KC brakes, although, if I'm not mistaken, Tichy also offers the KD type.
It's somewhat difficult to show the KDs on a hopper....
...and even moreso once they've been painted black...
The Pennsy used split K (KD) brakes on some of their X-29 boxcars, as seen on this Red Caboose kit...
No piping was included with the kit, and at the time, I probably wouldn't have known how to model it.
Here is a K brake still in use on the DURANGO AND SILVERTON railroad in Colorado.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
K brakes are pretty easy because there are not seperate air reservoirs and control valves.
This is the Tichy drawing:
This is a K brake on a caboose underframe. It is not fully detailed, but includes pretty much everything you can see when the caboose is on the track. I did not install the rods to the trucks because they would have been almost hidden by the wheels.
It looks OK from the side.
Here's a start. I'll have to dig through what I have on hand to see what's there.
Westinghouse_foundation_0024 by Edmund, on Flickr
There are some early Car Builder's Cyclopedias on line that may be helpful:
https://books.google.com/books?id=6f-ivno1QcYC&pg=PA1037&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false
Is there a specific area of the brake system you are looking for?
You can find scans of the old ICS Books which have a wealth of information for the modeler:
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89071905806&view=1up&seq=20
Full list here:
https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book//lookupname?key=International%20Correspondence%20Schools
Air_Brake_K by Edmund, on Flickr
Regards, Ed
Looking for instructions (esp. drawings) for KC brakes underside of freight cars. Thank you.