quick ? on athearn TOFC trailers

I know the athearn 25’ kit/rtr TOFC trailers come compressed and under scale BUT what about the " blue box 40’ trailers only",are these compressed under scale also ?

looking at some e-xxx blue box trailer 40’ units for some 60s era TOFC,

BUT those compressed underscale 25 footers that are cramed on a 50 F.C. BUG ME next to a “con-cor” or “metal” works scale trailers … very curious …Jerry

Jerry,

I will stand corrected if I am wrong, but I don’t believe so. The Athearn BB forties are a scale 1/87, just measured one. The two that come on a flat car, the tandem axle one’s for instance Wabash RR trailers, just measured, are 32 scale feet. Any trailer that is was 25ft, were single axle early 50’s. 25ft single axle,32 ft tandem, 38ft tandem and 40ft tandem, was the norm in that time frame. Most all scale trailers that I have, very many are to scale 1/87. Now you have my curiousity going and I’m going to do a little digging. I havn’t bought any new trailers probably in 15yrs.

Frank

Jerry, just did some digging, Athearn shows them to be 24ftr’s and now that I recall, I never did buy any of those for the simple reason, only the railroads used them, when they started TOFC service. You will notice that they all have railroad names on the trailer sides.

Retarded(retired) Teamster

Frank

the 25s ,I call em come on flatcars like this, they are scaled down in width (no biggy) and height (looks odd)

http://i997.photobucket.com/albums/af92/JNWELTER/Mobile%20Uploads/photo2_zps3f231ce1.jpg

now this pic is of the same athearn flat with the funky but simple rails casting removed, patched ,boards made from scraps and a hitch , this one has the metal works trailer on it

http://s997.photobucket.com/user/JNWELTER/media/Mobile%20Uploads/photo3_zps8bd4740f.jpg.html

sorry the links don’t open ,you have to click…Jerry

Jerry,

The links work for me. Anyway those are the one’s I was referring to, they do appear to be undersize and that is why I never bought those. The second link with the Mid Staes Truck Line is a 32footer or could be a 38ft, hard to be definite, without measuring. I have seen them in real life, also that is a Fruehauf trailer. Interesting!

Take Care,

Frank

Jerry,

If Your interested:

http://www.ppw-aline.com/modelfreightways.htm

Frank

Frank, Did you mean retired Teamster?

regards, Peter

Peter,

Yes I did, I fixed it.

Old Man,

Frank

BTW, If You knew me well enough, some would say that is questionable. [:D]

Frank, in the late 40’s and early 50’s there were lots of 24’, 25’ and 26’ trailers in use by trucking companies and by the railroads entering that new thing called piggyback.

True, Most trailers that size were single axle, but a few did have tandem axles - early reefer trailers especially, but some dry vans as well.

To the OP - yeas the 40’ Athearn trailer is a very accurate model.

Back to the Athearn 50’ flat with two vans - while Athearn did compress the demensions a bit, those cars/trailers are very representitive of early piggyback operations on a great many railroads. The actual cars they represent were 54’ flat cars that easily carried two 26’ trailers or one trailer - 32’ up to 40’ when they became legal nation wide in 1958.

And those cars can be made more accurate/relaistic with a number of small modifications:

Sheldon, seen your mods in a nother post on ,yes ,athearn mods and I think what you’ve done is very plausible period, my problem is when mixing the athearn 25s with-in a train of other trailers 32-34s and even more modern 40s the scale difference starts to bug me, though easy broken up with an empty flat in between , I just want to avoid buying some more trailers that may be compressed. I been doing the u-tube thing and seen a lot of mixed tofc and like the looks of the 50s 60s mixed trains of trailers on 54’ +or- flat cars.

I really like some of the road paint jobs on the athearn blue box 40’ Ive seen on e-xxx , just want to verify there size , thanks all …Jerry

Sheldon,

There were so many Pigs and Truck Lines in the US and depending on what part of the country you lived in, East, Midwest and West coast everyone was different then. West coast bigger, East coast smaller. There is not enough page to list, what is right or wrong.

Jerry,

From that link, I posted, if you were interested, it deals with nothing but Trucks, Pic’s and info. My current project is based on a Model from that Mag:

http://www.ppw-aline.com/images/mdlfrgt/2010-12_News.jpg

HO- scale with scratch built trucks and trailers and also kit bashed. My interest is Trucks and Trains, not Trains and Trucks.

Take Care!

Frank

Whatever works, or doesn’t work, for you is what you should do, but I have lots of both - moslty using the Athearn flat cars. Many with the 25’ vans and many with the various 32’ vans that have been on the market - mostly a mix of Walthers and MiniMetals.

I model the east, in 1954, so I don’t have any 40’ vans. And I have a few of the Walthers 75’ flats from years ago, first built for the PRR and Wabash in 1953.

I will try to post some more picks later.

Sheldon

Frank I’m sorry ,I completely missed you’re posted link ,got in late,but wow, thats a great link of period truck, truck/train/transportation .Some fantastic modeling …thanks again,in my favorites now!

Sheldon ,I hope I didn’t come up sounding sinicle last night, again . thank you very much for your input and I have follow your mods on the 25’ athearn Piggy backs with great interest and am applying those mods like removing the molded ladder/frame thingy on the flatcar ,cutting down to single Axel and using for spare tires ,adding ramps ,ALL these mods take an OK car/load to a eye pleasing model of period equipment .

NOW I can pick up a few of those B.B. 40s to mix in . on a mix of Athearn,concor,walth-GSC flats and have a early/mi 60s small piggy-back facility. …Jerry

The 24’ van trailers are not compressed (except in width) and really did exist, but mostly in the 1930’s. Modern TOFC service started in 1937 on the Chicago Great Western. The 2nd modern TOFC service started on the New Haven RR later that same year. In fact, NH men went to the CGW to find out how they did it, and used their patented tie downs for their own fleet. As a result, the NH was the No. 1 TOFC RR in the USA until SP got into the act in 1953. Note that at this time, there really wasn’t any interchange of TOFC. They were strictly on the home road.

The NH started TOFC service in 1937 with 70-ton 50’ flat cars in the 17200-class (75 cars). These were cast steel underframe cars, and were built for general service. A number of them were converted for TOFC use, but the vast majority were in regular service. On these cars, the NH would put two 24’ trailers and used wooden (later metal pipe) rub rails in the stake pockets.

So, believe it or not, the Athearn twin trailer TOFC 50’ flat is actually close to a real car. The main problem with it are the single cast “rub rail” section that can be popped off. The Laser-Kit wood peel-and-stick deck makes these cars look a lot better.

I just measured the Athearn trailer van in question with my dial calipers and found the following:

Length: 3.300"
Width: 0.990"
Height: 1.613"

Convert to HO scale, and you get

Length: 23’ 11.43"
Width: 7’ 2.23"
Height: 11’ 8.49"

Going by official RR drawings of NH equipment, the max trailer width was supposed to be 8 feet (rub rails were 8’ 9 1/2" apart) and max height of the trailer was to be 12 feet. Therefore, as one can see, the Athearn trailer isn’t that far off from reality. It’s worst sin is act

Paul,

Lots of great info there. But based on actual photos and records, and first hand info from my father who working the trucking business his whole life, there were lots of sub 30’ trailers still in use throughout the 50’s, by both railroads and common carriers.

First off, east of the Mississippi, many States had 32’ or 35’ restrictions until 1958.

Second, many carriers prefered 24’ trailers for city delivery, and much more industry was still urban than - no “industrial parks” yet to speak of.

The Southern Pacific used 24’ vans in their capitive service LCL piggy back service well into the mid/late 50’s, if not longer. So did the B&O and others. Jeff Wison’sbook on Intermodal has a 1955 photo of 24’ SP vans on a flat and a 1958 photo of one tractor pulling two 24’ vans.

And, not mentioned yet by anyone, the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western was a big early player - they used 40’ box car frames to build 40’ flats designed for one 32’ trailer - with unique sliding bridge plates rather than hinged ones.

Somewhere I have a very detailed history of the development of piggy back, and it came from an online source, if I can find it, I’ll post a link if possible.

Personally, even though I “know” all this history, I don’t get real hung up about it. I like early piggybacks, I make them look “plausable”, I run them in my 1954 make believe world. I make believe the idiots in Washington got out of the way of piggyback interchange sooner, and I run most every roadname that had early piggybacks on the ATLANTIC CENTRAL.

I have 50’, 40’ and a few 75’ flats with 32’ trailers, a few of those have hitches - just being invented in 1954 - I have lots of 24’ vans on 50’ flat cars - about 80 piggyback flat cars in total.

Roadnames include: ATLANTIC CENTRAL, NH, NKP, PRR, B&O, CN, CP, C&NW, MKT, Reading, UP, NP, Monon, DL&W, Eri

Paul,

First truck I ever rode in was a 1934 ‘‘LaMoone’’ with Dad driving, God rest his soul and I was hooked for life.

Two ‘‘Piggy’s’’ for the railroad:

http://www.ppw-aline.com/images/mdlfrgt/2010-03_News.jpg

Frank