04-03-2014, 02:27 PM
I did some more work on the Bachmann ex Tyco WM flat that I posted about earlier:
I painted the truck sideframes and wheels, replaced the cast stirrups with A-Line, re-weathered the deck, and added a Selley white metal load I had on hand. Now I need to study how this would have been blocked and add blocking and tiedowns. However, the car was light even with a metal weight under the deck -- once I took out that weight but added the heavy Selley transformer, it came out exactly to NMRA weight. I will also replace the awful brake wheel down the road.
On the standard-height flat, the load comes out to 16 feet above the rail. On the current BNSF, anything under 17 feet is not a high-wide load. I assume that a 16 foot load could have been routed on some lines in the 1960s, although WM itself did have low enough clearances that they used 10-foot inside height boxcars.
EDIT: based on some googling, it looks like unloaded, unenclosed tri-level auto racks were a little over 16 feet in height, so this car with its load could presumably go anywhere in the 1960s that tri-level auto racks could go.
I painted the truck sideframes and wheels, replaced the cast stirrups with A-Line, re-weathered the deck, and added a Selley white metal load I had on hand. Now I need to study how this would have been blocked and add blocking and tiedowns. However, the car was light even with a metal weight under the deck -- once I took out that weight but added the heavy Selley transformer, it came out exactly to NMRA weight. I will also replace the awful brake wheel down the road.
On the standard-height flat, the load comes out to 16 feet above the rail. On the current BNSF, anything under 17 feet is not a high-wide load. I assume that a 16 foot load could have been routed on some lines in the 1960s, although WM itself did have low enough clearances that they used 10-foot inside height boxcars.
EDIT: based on some googling, it looks like unloaded, unenclosed tri-level auto racks were a little over 16 feet in height, so this car with its load could presumably go anywhere in the 1960s that tri-level auto racks could go.