Scale - O Scale Trains Magazine Online

Brake wheels and the latest news on Proto48Slipping an IssueI had promised a second part to the rivet making discussionstarted in Issue #14. This will have to be delayed due to mynon-hobby obligations. It will appear inthe near future.An Overlooked Detail?All rolling stock has some sort ofbrake wheel or lever to permit traincrews to manually apply the brakes.Did you ever notice that there are realdifferences in the design of prototypebrake wheels? The most common verticalwheel installation is the Ajax brakewheel and gearbox. This design firstappeared in the late 1920’s and continuedto dominate as the principal designinto the early 1950’s. There are othercommon types such as the Klasing, Miner, Universal, Equipco,Superior, and Champion-Peacock, to name a few of the morecommon designs.I was prompted to do a quick survey of O Scale to see howmany different prototype designs could be accounted for. I usedthe latest issue of the Railway Prototype Cyclopedia (#10) asmy reference source, along with the 1940 Car Builder Cyclopedia.You can purchase the Railway Prototype Cyclopedia atmany hobby shops or directly from RPC (You can get moreinformation at their website http://www.geocities.com/rpcyc/).The results were surprising to me.Wheel Type Source Part NumberAjax 14377 Grandt Line #160Ajax 14377 Precision Scale PSH-4328/4329 (plastic)Champion 1148 Atlas/Roco freight cars N/AEquipco 3160 Intermountain Reefer provided with kitEquipco 3160 Precision Scale PSH-40299Klasing D-959 Precision Scale PSH-40551Miner D-3290 Intermountain Boxcar on parts sprueSuperior 566 Intermountain Boxcar on parts sprueThere may be others out there that I missed in my survey. Iknow that Custom Finishes (recently acquired by Des PlainesHobbies) has several brake wheels that may fill in a few gaps. Ifyou included what you can harvest from your leftover Intermountainparts and old Atlas boxcars, the brake wheel selectionis quite good, even by HO standards.Now, all you need to do is start looking at prototype photosto make sure that you have the right wheel on the car.Latest NewsWe have a few items to mention in the new products area.From left to right, plastic PSC Ajax wheel, an old Clouser Ajax wheel, Atlas/Roco Champion 1148 wheel, Intermountainreefer kit Equipco 3160, PSC Klasing D-959, Intermountain Miner D-3290, and the Intermountain boxcar kit Superior 566.42 • O Scale Trains - July/Aug ’04We found a photo of the new San Juan Car Company gondolakit, modeled as it appeared in the late 1950’s. The SouthernPacific added wood side extensions to the car to increase itscubic capacity. This permitted shippers to load more sugarbeets or wood chips. This was true of the composite car (G-50-23). The steel version, G-50-20, did not get extended sides, butsome other roads that owned similar cars did extend the sidesfor wood chip hauling.Pat Mitchell, of Clifton Backshop Services, 8122 Valley RunDrive, Clifton, Va. 20124, has started a new service for thosewho want to build a new Proto48 layout. The service entailsthe fabrication of a sub-roadbed made from 1/4” birch plywood,California Roadbed homasote strips, flexible urethanetie strips and all standard turnouts. All you need to provide isthe original drawing, rail, spikes and ballast. Pat has beenbuilding a new large layout and has cut the construction timeby two-thirds. The tie strips are made from urethane and havetie plates and wood grain.The material can easily bespiked, much like sugarpine. The tie plates are setup to take Code 125 andCode 138 Right O’ Wayrail. The picture illustratesthe detail found on thestrips. Pat suggests thatyou contact him for pricingand production time. He is alsointerested in finding out if enough peoplewant to buy the tie strips separately.The turnouts are available in #4, 5 & 6frogs with #7, 8 & 10 coming this summer.We received some samples of castfrogs from American Switch and Signal