Representing Brake Gear - More Art Than Science

[iandrewmartin]

Over on my Andrew's Trains site I've been working away at (and writing up how I've been) upgrading the Athearn Blue Box XAF10 Railbox cars 
(and yes I know they are not exact - but they're cheap and I have a few of them to upgrade and add to my fleet).

For more information you can head on over to the main site but I wanted to share some photos of the progress so far. 
This is a multi-part project that I've been working on for some time as I get a few moments.

Here are some excerpts from the article on adding brake gear (as art versus science):

"This article provides a method to model the brake rodding of an AAR AB air brake system to get the maximum look with minimum effort. 
Train lines and brake-system piping exist on all freight cars; 
the design of many car types (especially boxcars, flat cars, and gondolas) makes it difficult if not impossible to see in regular operation. 
Providing simplified brake gear without all that piping, and the time and materials required to install, 
improves the look of your freight fleet and can be done in a short time (usually an hour or so)."

"I’d like to thank Tony Thompson from the ‘Modeling the SP Blog’ who was the inspiration for this article. 
(See the Resources section at the bottom of this page for a link to Tony’s original blog post.) 
Tony’s minimalist brake line modelling omits piping and any other items of brake gear that are out of site on freight cars as we would ‘normally’ view them. 
Tony’s approach makes sense on a running model; after all if you can’t see it then why should you model it?"

I took my inspiration from Tony Thompson's excellent article on his blog. 
All of that detail is in the original post on my site. 
Let me know your thoughts. 
Images in the next post.

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