Wondering if I can get this detail in O Scale (I think it's called a "stay bolts", but not sure.

[pwilfong]

I'm building an old O scale kit of a 1800's reefer. Some of the parts in the kit were missing.  One of them are the bolts at the end for the tie rods.  I've attached a photo with the bolt circled in red.  Does anyone know if I can get these somewhere?  (The photo is from http://c-sng-discussion-forum.41377.n7.nabble.com/Modeling-Early-C-amp-S-Refrigerator-Cars-td7612.html)

 

[Tinplate Toddler]

Stay bolts are to be found in the firebox of a steam engine.

The bolts in your picture are just bolts.

[gmpullman]

pwilfong

 Does anyone know if I can get these somewhere?

You could try Tichy under nut-bolt-washer.

 

https://www.tichytraingroup.com/Shop/tabid/91/p/8144s/Default.aspx

There are other manufacturers as well but as far as I know, the Tichy are widely available and in a multiple of sizes.

Does your kit actually have functioning, threaded truss rods and you need the small brass nuts? Possibly Micro-Mark or others may have small brass nuts. Square may be trickier to find.

They would align with the truss rods and queen posts on the car. Some wood cars had steel end sills, older ones were wood with large iron or steel washers.

8845 001 by John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library, on Flickr

Good Luck, Ed

[pwilfong]

Thanks!

Not functional. I've looked on Tichy and the new owner of Grandt Line (San Juan Model Co) and elsewhere, and was hoping for something specific. But it looks like a normal NBW would be fine.  Does anyone have an idea of what the size would be?  Diameter of the rods, for example?  I would guess an inch or two.

[carl425]

Tinplate Toddler

The bolts in your picture are just bolts.

No, they are stay bolts.  Boilers are one case where they are used, but they are not exclusive to boilers.

Definition of stay bolt. : a bolt or short rod commonly threaded throughout its length and used as a stay to connect opposite plates (as in a steam boiler) that are subjected to a pressure tending to force them apart.

[doctorwayne]

Both Tichy and San Juan Car Co. (formerly Grandt Line) offer NBW castings in a variety of styles and sizes.

I used some on four of these modified Tyco reefers....

gmpullman

...Does your kit actually have functioning, threaded truss rods and you need the small brass nuts?...

I do know of at least one HO modeller who made functioning turnbuckles on a model of an early 20th-century freight car - as I recall, there were six underbody truss rods, and at least two additional ones on each side of the carbody.   Each one would have been threaded like the real ones - right-hand thread at one end, left-hand thread at the other.

Wayne

[SeeYou190]

Tichy Nut/Bolt/Washer castings will work perfectly.

If you want a longer piece of threaded rod coming through, just trim the NBW casting flush, drill it out, and insert a brass rod.

-Kevin

[Overmod]

Ed, I think you need to diagram exactly how the truss rods on one of these cars work, and what the various nuts and queen posts and such do.  To defend calling a longitudinal truss rod a 'stay bolt' only starts with the observation that there is no actual 'bolt' involved, only the threaded end of a rod...

Even the case of transverse rods acting to 'stay' car sides would involve 'stay rods'.

If we have to have nits to pick, we can look at why normal radial staybolts are called that when they're threaded on both ends and have no 'bolt heads'.  Indeed older construction used things like 'girder stays' and 'palm stays' and these are not bolts.

On the other hand a flexible staybolt is clearly a bolt with a head ... and if you have any question, the better ones came from the Flannery Bolt Company in Pittsburgh, would they lie? ... and generations of boilermakers have made and threaded staybolts without misunderstanding the thing or the tools used in connection with it.  Somewhat less certain is the semantics involved with the 'fillet-welded staybolt' and some of the late German practice involving its 'safe' use -- personally I'd prefer the term 'welded stay' for anything that is full-pen welded rather than threaded in.

People since the age of Winans have happily used the meaningless term 'friction bearing' as if it actually meant something -- you could justify this by saying that many years of unquestionably professional use makes it 'correct', but it kinda doesn't...

 

[SeeYou190]

Why don't we just talk about something equally meaningless like when it is correct to use "motor" and when it is correct to use "engine"?

I am sure there is more than one common usage for the term "stay bolt".

-Kevin

[doctorwayne]

SeeYou190

I am sure there is more than one common usage for the term "stay bolt".

Probably, but as Overmod mentions, the whatchamacallits sticking out of the car's endsills are simply the threaded ends of the truss rods - not really a bolt at all, even though they're meant to accept a washer and a threaded nut on each end.

Wayne

[gmpullman]

Overmod

Ed, I think you need to diagram exactly how the truss rods on one of these cars work, and what the various nuts and queen posts and such do.

     — As requested:

Wood_elevation by Edmund, on Flickr

Note how the truss rod passes over the truck bolster at Body Truss-Rod Saddle #20 . Excellent design element to "carry" the weight. This car may pre-date turnbuckles.

Wood_crop by Edmund, on Flickr

There was probably a bit of camber to the floor when the cars were new or shopped and the turnbuckles tightened.

Wood_end by Edmund, on Flickr

I have drawings of an "upset" truss rod where the threaded ends were forged, or upset to increase their diameter at the threaded ends but found no actual reference to the thread diameter or pitch. At least 1" and possibly 1-1/8"?

Wood_car-key by Edmund, on Flickr

[edit]

I looked through my stock of Tichy NBW for an example to show you. As mentioned I believe you would want a bit of the rod passing through the nut.

Tichy_NBW by Edmund, on Flickr

The back row would be your best example although what I have are hex nuts, a bit too contemporary for a wooden car. In the front row are square-head bolts, of course. Not the best choice for a truss rod, IMHO.

In the photo below I inadvertantly swapped the package and the item 

Tichy_NBW-pkg by Edmund, on Flickr

Here is the Tichy O scale catalog page featuring the NBW/Rivets &c.

Tichy_NBW-O-page by Edmund, on Flickr

 

doctorwayne

I do know of at least one HO modeller who made functioning turnbuckles on a model of an early 20th-century freight car -

I would need a padded room after attempting something like that! Beyond watchmaker's skills. Finding a 00-90 left-hand die may pose a challenge 

Good Luck, Ed

[OT Dean]

pwilfong

Thanks!

Not functional. I've looked on Tichy and the new owner of Grandt Line (San Juan Model Co) and elsewhere, and was hoping for something specific. But it looks like a normal NBW would be fine.  Does anyone have an idea of what the size would be?  Diameter of the rods, for example?  I would guess an inch or two.

 

Actually, as others have said, they're nuts and washers with the end of the truss rod as the threaded part.  I model the 1890s/early 1900s in O and I use .024" black monofilament line I got from Clover House, the premium dry transfer mfr., but they only list their #4295 .018" now.  I have a nice coil of it, probably enough to last the rest of my life, but you may be able to find .020" somewhere else online.  I make my own styrene washers and square nuts in the car end sills, center-drill them in place, then run the line in from both ends.  Grandt Line has O scale turnbuckles in plastic that are D&RG (and other NG lines) prototype that just fit the monofilament.  Prototype truss rods on vintage freight cars run about 1.25", which is close enough for me, since they work so well.  I first CAed the "rod ends" in the Grandt turnbuckles, but they eventually came free, messing up the whole truss system.  Now I use a method I saw in MR years ago: I run the "rod" into the turnbuckle and push it out from the center of the trunbuckle, then mushroom the end with my solder gun--quickly.  It's tricky and I've broken the turnbuckles a couple of times, but there are plenty of them in the Grandt Line package.  (BTW, I've had no luck trying to order any of the parts online--waited months with no reply--and gave up, but if you find the part number on the site, you can often get them from an ebay seller.)  Once both ends of the "rod" are in the turnbuckle, I thread them over the queen posts and pull them tight, centered between the posts, and use a couple of tensioners I made of ESM styrene strip, with spacers to give access to the rod end (a nylon screw pinches the rod tightly), AC them in place (the thickness of the car end sills usually holds them adequately).  When the cement has cured, I pull off the tensioners and clip off the ends, leaving a scale inch or more in place.  Now, Grandt Line used to make nut & washer castings with a center hole thriough which to run the truss rods (saw them in an MR article, too!), so maybe the new owner lists them.  I forgot: you want to install the K-brake and any levers and rods you want to put on the car first, rather than try to work around the truss rods.  I work almnost exclusively in styrene, the last 30 years or so, though there are some terrific kits of wood construction available (I still look up LaBell Woodworking's website and drool over their beautiful wood passenger cars of specific prototypes, like Soo Line, Chicago Milwaukee & St. Paul, and Duluth and Iron Range.  You can make up whole trains of open platform and vestibule cars: from baggage and postal cars, coaches and sleepers, a diner, observation--and even a business car.  Freight cars, too, of course.  There are several good lines of parts, kits, and structures.  Have fun.

Stay safe, everybody.

Deano

[doctorwayne]

I use monofilament fishing line for the truss rods, as it's less likely to stretch over time.  I also use strip styrene, simply slipped into place, as tensioners inside the car.  If it ever does get droopy, it's easy to slip a slightly thicker piece into place.  The clear line also allows a see-through look at the turnbuckles, and the truss rod portions readily accept most kinds of paint...

In the photo above, the turnbuckles are not yet affixed in their proper place, but are easily secured with a very small bit of ca.  Here's one of the slightly modified original cars...

...and the shortened carbodies...

This modified Model Die Casting boxcar better shows the tensioning set-up, and the fact that all four truss rods are done using a single length of line...

Wayne

[dknelson]

Tichy has excellent N-B-W castings, and it seems Grandt Line has as many NBW castings as Heinz has varieties, HO and O!  (bolts and washers vary)

For those in HO, don't forget that Kadee still sells their metal castings, which I find easy to deal with and less prone to disappearing somewhere on the floor.

Dave Nelson  

[pwilfong]

Thanks all for the great information.  I ended up using NBWs with 2.5" nuts from Tichy for the end stay bolts.  The following link is to a photo of the results.  (I did a poor job on the brake gear but you learn from your mistakes!)

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3sbKeMvBjm0/XydTtlJMJfI/AAAAAAAAAi8/78yV16vocHcfd0TZTWNAqnfwHJ19ZRtqwCNcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Mounting.JPG