i remember seeing Bessemer and Lake Erie hopper cars back in the late 60’s that had outside brake beams. what was the advantage of this? does anyone have any photos of this equipment? any ideas on how to model it in HO?
grizlump
I think it provided for doubling the amount of brakeshoes (the inner plus the outer), thus cutting back on the loading of each shoe.
For modeling these, maybe check out the trucks under the Athearn ore cars. They have the extension to the sideframe casting for the outside brakes. I don’t see them listed separately on Athearn’s site, but a phone call to them might get you some. You can get a sense of what they look like by doing a search for “ore” on their site and checking out the photos of the cars.
Ed
Hello,
The Bessemer & Lake Erie used trucks with sideframe extensions to support outboard brake hangers at least as far back as 1931, on a series of over 1,000 triple hoppers. The trucks also had inside brake hangers in the conventional location, so there was clasp braking on each wheel. The B&LE was a heavy-duty railroad that hauled coal north and iron ore south, and continued to apply these clasp-brake trucks to its hopper cars for many years. The clasp brakes offered greater braking power with less brake shoe wear, and brake-shoe replacement was and is a major maintenance expense for railroads.
Photos of B&LE triple hoppers with clasp brakes appear in many Car Builders’ Cyclopedias, and in the book, A History of the Bessemer & Lake Erie Railroad, by Roy C. Beaver.
At one time Model Die Casting offered a plastic HO truck with similar sideframe extensions on its flat-bottom ore gondolas. I don’t know if they are still available from Athearn.
So long,
Andy
Try these websites. I looked at a few of the most likely photos, but didn’t see any - but they may be in others.
Bessemer & Lake Erie Railroad Information (B&LE) at - http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/ble/ble.html
B&LE Freight Roster and photos, at - http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/ble/ble-frt.html
Were those on coal hoppers, or ore jennies ? I do recall that one of the iron ore roads - probably one of the Minnesota ones, though - cut off the outside brake beam hangers and truck frame extensions to save a couple thousand lbs. of dead/ tare weight per car, most likely when they went to the taconite pellets of ore.
I don’t know what the advantage would be - other than maybe as a ‘clasp brake’ set-up, with 2 brakeshoes on each wheel, or 8 per truck, 16 per car = simply getting more braking force available on each car. No idea how to model it, either.
- Paul North.
I found one photo online of the “early” B&LE triple hoppers. Go to rrpicturearchives, and look up BLE 93713. It’s a rather dramatic photo and shows a bit of the car.
Ed
I did a simple search for B&LE hooper car and came up with this photo. Had to adjust brightness and contrast. Enlarge the photo and you can see the end beam brake shoes.
Rich
Used to see a lot of those B&LE hoppers east of Baltimore on the B&O in the early 1960s. Never saw anything about them on paper, but word was, they were leased by the B&O to help ease their shortage of coal hoppers.
Remember seeing them in the 1970s with the outside hangers removed. Guess they didn’t need the clasp brakes when they went to composition brake shoes. I have a picture of B&LE 95059 taken in Oct 1974 at Phoenixville PA on the RDG that shows the outside brake beams removed.
Rich,
In case you might be interested, That B&LE hopper is on static display at the railroad museum in Conneaut, Ohio.
Tom