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[Anonymous]

During a plant tour of EMD years ago, we were shown that the diesel chassis were turned upside down for assembly of certain components and then rotated for installation of equipment that mounts on top of the floor.

I am curious if this same practice is used in the assembly of underframes for box cars, etc. Perhaps some reader of this forum works (or worked) for a car building firm or railroad shop involved in major rebuilds of freight cars and has knowledge on this point. Information would be appreciated.

The question arises because in modeling, we look at car underbodies upside down, whereas prototype engineering drawings often show top plan views looking down from above. This creates a big problem in that often the people who make model drawings (and the hobby magazines) don't recognize this and so drawings are published in model magazines with reversed underbody components.

A most recent example of this is Lionel's O Gauge milk cars introduced in fall of 2002. I'm told that Athearn HO scale freight cars also have this problem.

[Anonymous]

During a plant tour of EMD years ago, we were shown that the diesel chassis were turned upside down for assembly of certain components and then rotated for installation of equipment that mounts on top of the floor.

I am curious if this same practice is used in the assembly of underframes for box cars, etc. Perhaps some reader of this forum works (or worked) for a car building firm or railroad shop involved in major rebuilds of freight cars and has knowledge on this point. Information would be appreciated.

The question arises because in modeling, we look at car underbodies upside down, whereas prototype engineering drawings often show top plan views looking down from above. This creates a big problem in that often the people who make model drawings (and the hobby magazines) don't recognize this and so drawings are published in model magazines with reversed underbody components.

A most recent example of this is Lionel's O Gauge milk cars introduced in fall of 2002. I'm told that Athearn HO scale freight cars also have this problem.