34's or 50's

[SpaceMouse]

North of San Francisco 1882

Are these 34' cars or 50's Look at both the coaches in the center and at the far left.

[orsonroy]

Fifties. 34-foot cars are almost unheard of, and the Roundhouse line of Overton cars have a SINGLE car as a prototype.

The ore jennies are probably 10-footers.

[SpaceMouse]

That's what I though too, but look at these.

Here's some pictures of a Humbolt County Line called Alton and Pacific

[orsonroy]

Well....you're stretching things by looking to Maine two footers for standard gauge operations!

Heck, I can show you photos of a porta potty on a flat car, but I don't see many people looking to that as inspiration for their caboose fleet!

[dehusman]

If you have a bigger/better copy of the picture, measure the wheelbase or length of a truck and then figure out how many multiples of a truck the car is long.

Or compare the height of a side to its length. Regardless of whether its narrow or standard gauge a person is the same size so the walls will be close to the same height.

The basic technique is to compare the length to a known or probable dimension. One thing to be careful of with comparing it to existing equipment is there is a lot of stuff out there that is not "original" but is cobbled together to look "authentic" based on what the RR or operating group had available. For example theose two A&P cars might be built on boxcar underframes because that's what they had to work with when they wanted to make passenger cars.

Dave H.

[pcarrell]

Chip,

I counted 14 windows on the side of the closest car. At 2 foot per window thats 28 feet. Now put 1 foot between each one and you come up with 42 feet. Now throw on the ends of the car, maybe about 4 feet per end, and you are right about 50 foot.

I realize that this is not a very exacting way to do this but I think it gets you in the neighborhood.

[SpaceMouse]

QUOTE: Originally posted by orsonroy

Well....you're stretching things by looking to Maine two footers for standard gauge operations!

Heck, I can show you photos of a porta potty on a flat car, but I don't see many people looking to that as inspiration for their caboose fleet!

Okay, I looked deeper and found that the railroad was established in 1969, a 24" narrow guage tourist train. Looked good, until I found a newspaper article written about it.

[IRONROOSTER]

If you're looking for short passenger cars this site http://www.drgw.org/data/passenger/folio6 has drawings of 3 ft gauge cars.
Enjoy
Paul

[SpaceMouse]

I wasn't exactly looking for passenger cars. I was looking for pictures of steam engines used in the late 1800's and hopefully trying to find how in particular, Northwestern Pacific painted and lettered thier equipment.

The cars just struck me as being more the porportion of the 34" cars I hvev rather than the 50" cars I have. Then I found the A&P shortly after and jump to a conclusion.

[selector]

Chip, I came up with somewhat less than 40' in my estimate..but that is very short. Regardless, I think those larger cars in the first pic are in the range of 40'. Platform and couplers will take them into the 50' range.

Okay, let's consider the turntable. How long do you think it is? My guess would be that it would have been in the 50' range to turn locos used in the area. That little steamer and tender combo would have been near 40' in length.

[twhite]

Chip--I'd say 50'--that was pretty standard for passenger equipment from about 1870 to the late 1890's, when longer, enclosed vestibule cars came along. The former Roundhouse 50-footers should fill the bill quite nicely. And on some of the California short lines, those 50-footers lasted well into the 1920's and '30's--I remember seeing a couple in Maintainance of Way service up near Truckee in the late 'forties.
Tom[:D]