I have yet to see a prototype photo of a flat car with the brake wheel on it’s side like the old Athearn flat cars. Did such a car exist? If so what RR used it? Or was this a way for the model maker to include a brake wheel that would be harder to break off with rough handling?
I believe the ones you’re referring to are flats used for TOFC / Piggyback service. The brakewheel is on the side so it’s not in the way of the flats when they’re loaded or unloaded ‘circus style’:
General service Athearn flats have the brakewheel at the end:
Cars with a horizontal brakewheel, like the old Walthers / Train Miniatures 40’ flat, were ‘steam era’ cars.
I believe the New Haven had flats with the brake wheel on its side used in piggyback service, most 40 foot flatcars had the small vertical brake wheel, the athearn car’s not correct. Most railroads quit building forty foot flats right around the end of world war two.If you have a forty foot athearn car cut off the brake wheel assembly and add one from tichy.
A photo in the 1943 Car Builder’s Cyclopedia (reprinted in Train Shed Cyclopedia #17) shows a Western Maryland fifty ton 50 ft flatcar (Greenville Steel Car Co builder) that has the brake wheel and housing mounted on the side of the car very much like the Athearn car pictured, but less bulky needless to say.
Nothing about the photo of the car suggests it was in TOFC service or was anything other than a normal service flat car.
Very distinctive – the brake rod from the brake wheel housing leads towards the center of the car side on the outside, and then enters into the car thorugh an opening in the stide. That would be a very delicate, and easily broken, bit of detail.
The design of the brake wheel on both the 40’ and 50’ flat cars from Athearn are prototypical as Dave said. Not the most common design, but they did exsist, and some of the cars with that brake wheel design did see Piggy Back service.
I have some photos somewhere, I will post one if I can dig one up.
The conventional vertical shaft brake wheels common on flat cars where modified for Piggy Back to allow them to drop down and the wheel fell often fell down into a small rounded recess that made it flush with the deck for end loading and unloading.
And of course bridge plates and rub rails were added for Piggy Back service.
I’ve got an old Athearn BB 40’ Flat car that was painted for Pennsylvania but I stripped it and shaved off the molded grabs hoping to make a more accurate model. Trouble is, now I can’t find any prototype photos for 40’ flat cars. I don’t want to do any major rebuilding to make a totally accurate model(I don’t mind cutting off the brake wheel, I’m not into splicing two kits together or rebuilding the side sills), just something that is really close. Does anybody know what class flat car this is supposed to represent? I’d like to paint it in a road name that would be feasible for the Detroit area (C&O, B&O, NYC, WAB,etc) but if it matches another railroad almost exactly, I’d like to make it as prototypical as possible.
I’m also having trouble finding photos for the Tichy 40’ 50 ton flat as well. I found an Erie photo (maybe car #9848) that’s close, but I don’t think it’s an exact match. This is such a nice model, I want to paint it to whatever prototype it represents, maybe even buy a couple more. I have seen similar cars used as car float idlers, but I don’t have plans on modeling a car float (even though the C&O had several); it was a good deal and a nice model so I got it. Maybe it will look good behind a Ma&Pa brass 0-6-0 I have…
I recently learned (thanks to the DM&IR Historical Society’s publication) that 100 years ago some flatcars had a brakewheel that could be moved from the end of the car to the side. It had braking mechanisms in both places.
Thanks Ed, there’s a train show this weekend, I’ll keep an eye out for the book. Check out this pic I found (on the fallen flags website) accidentally while looking for other models I have. It looks pretty close to the Tichy model and it was taken in 1981. I still want to paint mine more like the (older) prototype.