Wood Car Construction Books

[FLSTEAM]

Are there any books published that detail the construction of wood Cars?

I have ordered two drawings for the Colorado RR Museum but they are only erection prints.

John B

[makinsmoke]

John,
I have photos, diagrams, and links to websites on wood cars, depending on what kind of car you are talking about.

I do not have any books on construction from the ground up.
Depending on what you want to build I can probably help.

Brian

[Fender]

John,
The Car Builders Cyclopedia of American Practice or Car Builders Dictionary are available online as pdf files:
1906 http://www.archive.org/details/carbuild ... 00smitgoog
1881 http://books.google.com/books/about/The ... pNAAAAYAAJ

[SZuiderveen]

The very best book is Voss. Don't take my word for it, the below is from the bibliography of John White's The American Railroad Passenger Car:

Voss, William. Railway Car Construction. New York: R. M. Van Arsdale, 1892.
The finest work ever published on American railway car construction. The text explains concepts, materials, and proportions. It is not a history and was meant to be a handbook for the practical car builder. Both freight and passenger cars are included. Extremely fine engineering drawings and engravings illustrate the work. This book goes beyond The Car Builders’ Dictionary, which only illustrates what was done; Voss explains why it was done.

I am lucky enough to own an original, but a facimilie edition is available from the Orange Empire Railway Museum:http://www.oerm.org/pages/books.htm

Steve

[Dick_Morris]

I agree on the value of Voss. It was also republished in two parts, freight and passenger, as Train Shed Cyclopedias many moons ago. I've about worn mine out. These may be available on Ebay.

Several of the Carbuilders' Cyclopedias/Dictionaries are availble on Google books. There are also other techincal books on car repair on Google books and Archive.org if you do a bit of searching.

Many years ago Railway Hardware Company offered simple plans for model cars built from wood including a flat and a gon. They probably scaled to about32 feet. The longitudinal sills were nominal 1"X2" lumber. Spruce would probably be more suitable than the "white wood" that comes from the box stores. They aren't for hard usage, but should be OK if you can control how they are used. If you design in the truss rods as part of the structure they are fairly strong. He also sold a range of white metal parts such as dummy brake parts, turbuckles, ogee washers, etc.

[makinsmoke]

Ideally everything would be oak.

Right.

So, side sills, end sills, the everything else can be decent lumber cut to scale dimensions.

Remember, these things were built like bridges, with lots of tie-ins, reinforcements, and threaded rods both vertically, horizontally, and in the case of some like the narrow gauge D&RGW stock cars, diagonally.

With all of that dimensioned reinforcement, once you get the assembly tied together it will pretty much stay.

Now, you can't have twisted beams and such, and you need to be careful about buying treated lumber, because a great deal of it is shipped still dripping wet from the plant. Once installed, and it begins drying, all kinds of very ugly things happen in different planes.

I'd use good kiln dried lumber, and if you can get it grab as many old style pallets as you can get your hands on. The tops and bottoms are usually pine, and very beat up and weathered pine, but if you have a planer you can make some really nice stable scale boards from the stuff.

The real gold is in the 2 bys' that hold the thing together. On the "real" pallets these are oak. Real, old school oak, and you better have a good blade in whatever you plan on cutting these with because they are usually harder than the hubs of hell. Want an example? You can drill and tap this stuff.

And when you cut it for the first time the smell of antique store permeates wherever you are in and you know you have struck gold.

Let me know what you are planning on building John.
Brian

[Fender]

Ideally everything would be oak.

Perhaps, but "back in the day" a lot of long leaf southern yellow pine was used for car sills. The majority of the mills in Mississippi manufactured car sills during the period of 1880-1910. Not to be confused with ponderosa or western pine, which is much lighter & softer.

[makinsmoke]

Hi John,
Kicking you a few links while I dig for drawings.

http://www.riograndesouthern.com/RGSTec ... gstec3.htm

http://www.riograndesouthern.com/RGSTec ... 9stake.htm

Quite a few of these cars had truck bolsters that were standard gauge bolsters that were cut down to fit the narrow gauge frame. Jeff Smith of Branchline Products sells these bolsters in 1-1/2" scale (4-3/4" narrow gauge).
The rest had built up strap type frames.

I love digging for stuff and when I become lax in digging for info for myself, it is always a challenge to find information for someone else's query. Case in point. I just ran across Tim Knies website while looking for gondola stuff for you. Circa 2005, and 1:20.5 scale, but I think you'll find the information intriguing.
http://gold.mylargescale.com/timmy/DRGW ... ondola.pdf

The photos I've seen of narrow gauge cars (still looking) being rebuilt show the end beams mortised out in two rows, top and bottom. However, there is no reason that Tim's method here would not work in 2-1/2" scale!

These little books are full of photos:
http://www.quickpicbooks.com/files/drgw ... nbook.html
http://quickpicbooks.homestead.com/file ... 99book.htm

Get ahold of Jeff Smith. He sells parts for 1-1/2" scale (4-3/4" gauge) narrow gauge equipment, but he also has lots of drawings of the prototype equipment and may have the drawing for the car you want.
http://branchlineproducts.com/about.html branchlineprod@msn.com

Okay, here on the Friends of the Cumbres and Toltec website are photos of past work sessions. Below is a photo of a guy comparing drawings to an end beam. Note the two layer mortised cutouts on the end beam. The sills fit into the end beam vertically top to bottom and there are two tenons per beam. The sills are not in this photo. The end of the car would face away from you.
http://cumbrestoltec.org/gallery.html?f ... 2#category
2010 Work Session photo B_15

Here the beam is being mortised:
http://cumbrestoltec.org/gallery.html?f ... 2#category
2010 Work Session photo A_11

And here are a couple of side sills being mortised for the verticals. Not sure if it is a box car or stock car:
http://cumbrestoltec.org/gallery.html?f ... 3#category
2010 work session photo C_23

This photo is of Derrick Car OP at Chama and so has doubled side sills and truss rods inset into them and flat steel bar sitting on top of the sills. It does however, show you how the end beam relates to the side and center sills and how the truss rods end up through the end beam into the coupler casting and end washers and nuts:
http://cumbrestoltec.org/gallery.html?f ... 3#category
2010 Work Session F picture 27

Ok, here is a photo of the end of the sills on the same car earlier in the teardown/rebuild at Chama, showing the tenons.
http://cumbrestoltec.org/gallery.html?f ... 5#category
2009 Work Session photo D_109

Yep. Derrick Car. D_105 is an even earlier photo and shows the car with the king post. That explains the double height sills for strength.

As Jack Elam would say,"Quite a contraption."
http://cumbrestoltec.org/gallery.html?f ... 6#category
2009 Work Session D_116.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you want more.
Brian

[Russ Hanscom]

Brian covered it quite well, but if you want more details, I am the team leader on the OP derrick project and have done a few other cars as well. I even have a metal template for the mortices and tenons - saves argument and fit up time; if it does not fit, it is not ready.

Russ

[makinsmoke]

Hi Russ!

Probably you in one or more of those photos!

He's really looking for info on building a gon in 2-1/2", but was asking specifically about the end beams and how they were attached. I ran out of time this evening searching through the Friends' photos looking for gon pics. If you have any...

BY the way, a very grateful THANK YOU not only for the amazing and critical work that you and other Friends do in maintaining and rebuilding this history so that others may enjoy it, but from a modeling perspective, for documenting it.

If anyone here has not been to the Cumbres and Toltec Railroad or the Durango and Silverton for that matter, please take the time. The journey back through time is amazing.
Brian

[FLSTEAM]

WOW

Brian you have gone way above and beyond the call of duty!!!

Great links.

Thanks

John B.

[makinsmoke]

You're welcome, John.

Again thanks to all the folks that document their work so the rest of us can go to school on them!

Brian

Ps: Don't forget to get US photos of your gon!