I have a couple of HO box cars, both decorated to promote roller bearings for use in freight cars. Did these cars ever exist in prototype? I remember seeing magazine ads for "Timken Roller Freight" when I was a bit younger but I don't recall having seen pitures of actual cars in service. If they did exist, what kind of trucks would they have been equipped with? I doubt that today's modern roller bearing trucks existed at the time. Could they have been Bettendorf friction bearing trucks with roller bearing conversions? Thanks for any info here!
We had a thread on this years ago, and I believe the subject has been addressed on RyPN. I don't think there were ever more than 1 or 2 actual cars (the exact number is known but I forgot it) and those drawings in the ads of Pacemaker-style long trains painted alike are ... well, the same kind of propaganda as calling plain bearings "friction bearings" because rollers are 'antifriction'.
You bring up an interesting point: were the sideframes just hogged out to take roller bearings, or were seats in the sideframes provided as in modern practice for complete bearing 'cartridges' on wheelsets? I'd be inclined to think the latter, as the advantages in practice are so great...
As noted, these would have been 'enclosed' style (oil lubrication, no visible rotating end cap) -- Athearn apparently had a model of the actual truck by 1950, when someone observed it published in an ad in Model Railroader (!).
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