12" working railroad

[Glenn Brooks]

Ryan, yes, your frame certainly looks like it will do the job right enuf.

One thing I’ve concluded is laying my small bit of track would have been easier if I had fabed up a ballast car like I originally planned. I didn’t, but looking back - or forward - I certainly would do so if I ever get into laying more track. Spreading gravel over the extent of ROW you are planning certainly could justify adding an additional car to your consist. Your existing frame design would work quite well for a ballast car, I think. Maybe with two longitudinals inside the outer frame members. Probably would double as a brush carrier, general duty work horse also. Something to think about maybe.

BTW, I bought six more 2.5” couplers from RMI. A bit spendy but, very high quality cast reel construction. Thought about going with simple link and pin couplers, with spring buffers on both ends, but the Ottaway and the Campbell riding cars going to be more replica oriented, so made the plunge. I’ll bring a couple up to B’ham next trip so you can see what they look like.

Glenn

[rkcarguy]

Steamin, there is no defensive plot there, I was more agreeing with your comment regarding "run what you brung" as I don't have $1000's for buying wheels and castings and all. I have access to alot of scrap, alot of cool equipment, and of course my sweat equity.
This is the frame for my riding car, yes it's overbuilt I'm sure, but I am 280#'s.
I've been kicking around the idea of a functioning ballast car, but have some concerns, mainly that it would high center and derail on the dropped ballast. 5/8" clear gravel is unfortunately nearly 4" in full scale so it would only take going too slow for a split second and I'd be on the ground. I'm almost thinking I'd be better off with some kind of chute or dump bed I could attach to one of my flat cars, and have it dump ballast BEHIND the train. My bulkhead flats are going to have removable bulkheads, in case I want to double them up and haul track panels or bring a large log out of the lower end of the property. I'll be utilzing 6" aluminum I-beam for the center beam and I expect these to laugh at 2500#'s, so one of them would be a good candidate for some kind of ballast dumping bin.

[Pontiacguy1]

If you want quick and dirty for your ballast car, maybe make a gondola with one end that can slide off, then you can simply rake the ballast out of that end right on the track. In fact, make it where each end can be removed and you won't have to ever worry about turning the car. You can also pull the ends off and put stuff like large tree branches, long sections of track, landscaping timbers, and other bulky items in there. It would also look like a regular car in your train when not doing track work, not like a purpose-built MOW car. Wouldn't be as fast or easy to use as a true ballast car, but would be something you could do pretty quickly. Just a thought.

[rkcarguy]

That's a good thought, a gondola would probably be the best, as there is no tapered ends under each end like a hopper. I could make a gondola with "tailgates" and simply rake it out either end.

Here is what I'm after for the riding car:
There is actually a couple of these in our local yard that BNSF uses for track ballasting, they've been painted but the GN goat outline is still slightly visible under the paint. For some reason I couldn't find an actual pic of these online.

GNhopper.jpg (14.2 KiB) Viewed 2771 times

Maybe a good candidate for the gondola:

[rkcarguy]

I welded in the braces last night. The weld over the coupler pocket got some bubbles in it when I got a gust of wind thru the shop, gonna have to grind that out and redo it.

[rkcarguy]

Glenn,
Regarding the couplers, some time ago I found a blueprint of a full size coupler online. I scaled the dimensions and compared it to the Tom Bee coupler and it was almost spot on for 2" scale, within 1/16" measured several different ways. I suspect that modelers like the coupler to be a bit bigger, and it's always a good thing because they are stronger as well. I think they will perform fine, the weak spot would be the pivot pin in the couplers knuckle as it's 3/16", but it's grade 8 and specs say it should still have 2580#'s shear strength. I don't expect to be anywhere close to that, I figure I'll be lucky to see 1000#'s of tractive force which would be less than half of the shear strength. I should be able to chain my locomotive to a tree and not be able to break the coupler.
I understand your use of the 2.5" scale coupler, as you are building far larger scale trains than I am.

[steamin10]

It is my experience that pulls through a train are planned for. It is the shock of derails and crashes that break things. Mostly the aluminum couplers in 1.5 scale give up when they get twisted in a wreck. As things go, it saves the car end from destruction as stronger couplings can damage the car itself. As long as the chains hold nothing escapes. half a train racing down a long grade can be a scary sight to an engineer coming up behind. Ask me how I know that one.

Once again, a simple box made of 1x's on trucks will go along ways to keeping things moving. It dont have to be pretty, preferably not, as shoveling gravel out the end is hard on anything. But since it follows the track there is no question that it can access all the right of way where a tractor or dumper trailer may be lost in the woods. In the line of thinking that once you have a good hammer, everything begins to look like a nail, select your direction carefully, once you start doing one thing the procedure is unlikely to change without some great effort. A working gravel car will look like abuse if used at all, and that is what happens in real terms. Expect some wear and tear, and plan for it.

On the the 14 inch line I helped build, the masters made a purpose built gravel car that had three chutes out the hopper. One dropped between the rails, the others outside the rails. The rounded chutes had square tube skits, that extended to the rail height , and thats where the gravel would stop flowing, to be raked and spread from there. These chutes had air controls that went to the end of the car to flip open or closed in any combination. Some gravels would bridge over the holes and fail to drop creating a rat hole effect, but a broom handle would upset that plot and get things moving again right where you wanted the gravel to fall. One thing the track had to be supported or the car would crush the rails out of shape with its load in low spots. So lifting bars and a tamping process was ongoing as the ballast was laid, the car having the effect of being a road roller and compressing the gravel under the ties. Thats where we flopped the entire car on uneven ground, it settled so much on the first pass. A game crew and some shoveling set things right again in a few minutes.

[rkcarguy]

Well I slept in, enjoyed some bacon, and then an afternoon of complete inactivity. However I did get out into the garage and drilled the holes in the coupler box tubes and drilled/tapped the coupler box stiffeners for the forged steel M10x1.5 eye bolts for the safety chains. These were freebies from a relatives motorcycle store, new bikes would come with several of these threaded into various places to secure the bike inside the crate. I got enough for 12 pieces of rolling stock.
Before leaving work yesteday, I ground out the holes in the bulkheads and stiffeners so the coupler box tubes would slide through. I need to clean up the holes so the pipe nipples slide through and can be welded, and that should conclude the welding portion of the work on the riding car frame and I can take it home.

[rkcarguy]

[rkcarguy]

All welded up! Tomorrow I have a doctors appointment so the final grinding and roto-blasting is going to have to happen Monday.

[Glenn Brooks]

Ryan,

Looking good. What are the Material dimensions of your frame members and stiffeners? I am getting ready to build a couple of cars and hope to shamelessly copy your design.

BTW, I had the same question you asked above about ballast piling up and derailing the ballast car. Or at the very least, stopping it dead in its tracks, so to speak. The big boys have the same problem. So I learned they put a tie in front of each truck while the loco pulls the ballast car, and the wheels push the tie which pushes the gravel off the rails. 15” track crews do the same thing - using 4x4’s. Some miniature car builders fab up miniature ‘Snow plow’ looking blades in front of each wheel. All of which requires some significant tractive effort from a loco.

Now like steaming10 said, it’s a great idea to make the ballast opening small enuf and at the proper height so the gravel doesn’t slip over onto the rail. In other words, dumps down the Middle of the track. You can then spread and tamp sideways out to the ends of the ties, with a shovel handle. This is more or less what I ve ended up doing.

So, thinking out loud, I’ve finally concluded a MOW ballast car is a completely different animal, And probably unnecessary for the initial track laying. An MOW ballast car is used to spread a fixed amount of gravel over anprepared, existing track. Already graded and pretty. So spread, lift track, tamp, move on. Now I think laying the foundation ballast, befor laying the track down, is the way to go. In fact without rail laid down, you can’t even use a ballast car until after after everything is tamped and In place.

So If I do any more tracking laying I’d probably use a small tractor to pull a home made pneumatic wheel ballast hopper to lay the ballast- and grade and compact the ROW before hand. Particularly with a long stretch ofTrack. Then lay the track.
This is the the quickest and easiest way, I think.


Glenn

[rkcarguy]

I'm sort of flattered someone wants to copy my design haha!
The long side angles are 1-1/2x1-1/2x1/4. These will get tied together better with whatever I end up using for the floor of the riding car, and also the sides of the hopper sheet metal will attach to these. It will be plenty stout for a riding car when it's all done and together.
The center spine channel(rusty) I think is a C3x4.1. The cross-braces that support the trucks are C4x5.4, and the two center braces are C3x3.5. I had to cope the C3x3.5's the "hard way" to fit into the angle so they wouldn't protrude below the angle. If you use something else that is 1/4" less tall than your angle you won't have to do this. All I had on hand was the C3's and I didn't have enough 1x1 HSS.
The square tube angular braces at each end are 1x1x.120.
I drew the "end plates" and "coupler pocket gusset plates" in CAD and had them cut on our plasma table from 3/8 plate. The plasma cutter does leave a bevel on the edges, which resulted in having to do much grinding inside the couple pocket to get the 1x2 tube to slide through it. Next round of those will be done on the laser and they should slide right in and weld up.
If I was going to do a design for a ballast car frame(gondola), I would probably use a pair of C6 channels at frame width with shorter cross-members in between.
If you're looking for 3-1/2" scale, I would suggest sizing the angle up to 2" or 2-1/2", or maybe a same size square tube, and make the end plates taller to match.
One word of caution. Any time I've welded up an angle frame, the open side of the frame always shrank when I fully fillet welded the cross-members into the angle. In other words, the frame would have a upward bow in the middle of it, with the vertical leg down and horizontal leg up top. For this frame, I only welded about 1/2" up each side of the vertical leg, and fully welded the rest, and it's nice and flat. Do one weld at a time, then do the opposite weld on the other side of the frame next. Don't weld all one side then the other. This will ensure you don't get any twist.
I always saw cut my lengths about 3/32 to 1/8 short, so I have a bit of a gap to work with. It welds nicer, and also for the un-welded area, I can get paint into the gap so it doesn't become a rust oozing point.