Help please: it is difficult getting information when you are on the other side of the Atlantic!
I am modelling N&W and freelance in the Appalachians in the early 'fifties in HO. I have just bought two Walthers Wood End Reefer kits, which come with the horizontal brake wheel above the roof. Very attractive and atmospheric, but would these still have been running like this in the 'fifties? It would be nice to build them like that, but if that is wrong, can I just convert them to vertical mounted wheels at the top of the car end? Presumably the cars themselves would still have been running as they were only some 20 to 25 years old.
I know there was a thread on this recently, but only dates for removal of walkways were established, not for the brake wheel change. Sorry if you all know this, but I have had no luck with my web searches.
Thanks in advance for any advice you can give.
Peter
I believe you can get by with using the wooden reefers during the 50's just as long as you heavily weather them. They were built around the turn of the century into the 20's and were pretty much on their last legs in the 50's. I model the Southern Pacific and as a kid in the 60's I still caught a glimpse of the real SP hauling old wooden T & NO cars on the train that used to transverse the rails behind my house. The old T & NO cars still had the roof walks with the hand wheels above the roof. They dissappeared about 1967...chuck
Horizontal brake wheels (often called staff brakes) were applied into the 1930s and I while there were rules on getting rid of the old K brakes and installing AB - I am not aware of a rule on the horizontal brake wheel at least until the mandatory deletion of wood [or metal] roof walks in the 60s (now that I think of it on an ice bunker reefer there were good reasons for the roof walk beyond brakeman reasons and I wonder if they were exempt from the roof walk rule -- on that I defer to the many experts on these forums). But obviously most railroads preferred the so-called power handbrakes - the vertical mount type. I am not aware of a "power" vertical [sorry, meant horizontal/staff] handbrake wheel other than perhaps on flatcars and maybe some tank cars although that is not to say they did not exist on house cars.
Thus, assuming a car with AB brakes that could lawfully operate into the 1950s I cannot think of a reason why the horizontal brake wheel could not still be used, again assuming a car built prior to the mid 1930s (still well within normal life span for a car in the late 1950s). I think stock cars kept their staff brakes longer than most cars because of their limited seasonal use. But for a heavily used reefer the staff brake would have been regarded as obsolete which is not to say that means it would have been upgraded.
As regards wood reefers, wood was a preferred material for reefers well after the wood car era was otherwise over. I can recall seeing wood ice bunker (sides AND ends) C&NW reefers in service into the early 1970s. And they were nicely maintained at that. I am sure it was the ice bunker (and low capacity) not the wood sides that primarily caused it to be retired. The wood was in great shape and the paint job was fairly fresh.
Dave Nelson
Thanks very much Chuck and Dave for your prompt replies - very helpful indeed.
So, it looks as if I can build them with the horizontal wheels without committing too great an anachronism. After all, if somebody comes along to tell me otherwise, it would not be difficult to alter them to vertical later. The flip side to the difficulty of getting information on US roads over here in England is at least matched by the advantage of there being, for that very reason, far fewer people who are likely to tell you that you are wrong!
Has anybody else any thoughts on this before I start work?