what does a sclae testcar do? is it something that is really heavy and is used for calibrating railcar scales?
ive seen them but never got a real look at them
Precisely! Placed on any car scale on the system or at customer and allows for calebration!
henry6 may have answered all you asked and wanted to know.
But, just in case you (or anyone else) would like to know more, then [insert early 21st century universal response] try a Google Advanced Search of “scale test car” as an “exact wording or phrase” and “rail” as “all these words”. You should get better than 2,000 “hits”, including a Wikipedia stub article and a photo of an early NBS car, and other discussions of same -probably more than you ever wanted to know !
- Paul North.
If anyone wants to see, touch and fondle an old test car (hey, it’s none of my business what people do in their spare time), there’s an old Western Weighing and Inspection Bureau scale test car in the steam yard at Illinois Railway Museum.
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The door on the side of a cast steel scale test car is a tool box, that must be emptied before the car is used as a standard to calibrate the scales. The only “fine tuning of the weight” of a scale test car is done by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (formerly National Bureau of Standards) when the car itself is calibrated. If they worry enough about the weight accuracy to not equip the car with airbrakes so brake shoe wear won’t change it, they certainly aren’t going to allow some railroader to add or subtract weight through a hatch on the car, which is supposed to be a weight standard. You’re not even allowed to use them if ice or snow is accumulated on the top of the car (note the sloped top).
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Scale Cars are used whereever a railroad scale needs calibration, and they take many forms. The following link will take you to Railcarphotos, where you can see a pretty good variety of these cars pictured:
http://www.railcarphotos.com/Search.php?SearchType=Scale%20Test%20Car&Search=Search