Having migrated to DCC few months ago I decided to replace all the plastic wheels on my car fleet with metal ones so the rails will stay cleaner. I now own “tons” of plastic wheels seeking a future. I thought about making gondola loads with them. Surely have enough for many gondolas. Is there anyone that has ideas, photos, magazine articles or texts about the way to use them.
Thank you.
If you are thinking of wheels with axles, you can see several examples here: http://thecrhs.org/node/23921
Tichy sells their version: http://www.tichytraingroup.com/index.php?page=view_product.php&id=275&category=Freight+Car+Kits
The hardest part of representing these loads is dealing with the pointed axles on your removed wheel sets. If you notice on the Tichy kit, the axles have a blunt end representing a bearing.
On the other hand, if you are thinking of scrap wheel loads, I think all you have to do is cut the axle off flush with the front and the back of the wheel, and then throw the wheels in a gon. Obviously easier to do the cutting if the removed wheel sets have plastic axles.
I would nip off the pointed axle ends and rust them up for starters. My road of choice (SP) had specific wheel tenders built for this service , first generation tenders were constructed from obsolete flat cars, contoured rails were installed on the deck to hold the wheel sets, addtional improvements were the application of end bulkheads to restrain any slack movement and eliminate the need for tiedowns, SP perfected utilization and mass production of these tenders in later years by means of casting as a single unit. Or you could remove all traces of the axles and stack them atop one another, once again, SP had custom storage pallets for this purpose that could be moved by forklift, these would require a light touch of rust as well.
Dave
If any of your wheels have ribbed backs, those should be axle-free and heavily rusted if you model the modern era. The prototype cast iron wheels were banned a long time ago. (Wonder where those 50+ year old wheels were hiding…)
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - where freight stock had spoked wheels)
Spoked Wheels?!?[:|]
Not spoked. They have ribs cast into their backs. Steel wheels have smooth backs
Joe
A common way for shop or MOW forces to ship wheels is on a car that has a staggered set of tracks. That way the wheels will interleave, allowing more on the same car while staying within the usual car deck width. Many different examples, just thought I’d mention that as a design feature that looks right.
BTW, cut off pointy axles ends, apply Plastruct or styrene rod to represent the bearing end of the axle and it’ll look OK once weathered/rusted.
Chuck is talking about Japanese prototype. Like in some parts of Europe, spoked wheels were still commonly used on rolling stock during the first half of the 20th century, so were still found on certain lines long after they were an anachronism elsewhere.
Joe, you’re right - for US manufactured cast iron wheels. Sakel was asking about Japanese wheels.
Sakel, that’s what I said. For some reason unknown to me, the JNR standard was 860mm diameter spoked wheels for locomotive lead and trailing trucks and non-powered rolling stock. About the mid-1950s passenger stock started showing up with disc wheels, but they weren’t applied to new freight stock until 1960. Even then, rebuilds and slow-speed cars retained the 8-spoked wheels until well after my modeling month. And a lot of the disc wheels were drilled with lightening holes.
Unlike their prototypes, most of my models are fitted with disc wheels.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - inaccurately)
Hi Guy
I was a wheel shop foreman at the Sac Wheel shops, both freight and diesel.
New wheels shipped in, were in boxcars and in long rows so that a fork lift with a special heavy duty single fork could unload wheels in short order four to five at a time. These were a rusty tarnish color.
Scrap wheels were loaded into dons via an automated overhead roller roller system and dropped into the dons by three chutes, wheels just slid down the chute and dropped into the dons, The wheel dons sides and bottoms were rather beat up. Most of these wheels were a grey to grimy blackish color and a few dark brown.
My suggestion of what to do with them are
Dons, Use the darker ones and load them any which way,
Box cars with open doors, leave enough room for a forklift to drive in and turn 90 degrees to slide its fork into the wheels.
Flat cars, for mounted wheels, tan new reconditioned and darker wheel sets to have the wheels to be pulled and mounted
Unloaded new wheels,(shop wheel storage area) glue them in single rows to size all of which should be a lighter rust color.
Make roller bearings out of plastic tubing for the roller brgs and glut to end of the pointy axles for flat car loads
My suggestion is not to cut the axles or ends, but to take a small pin punch and just tap the axles through the wheel, leaving the center hole.
Ribbed wheels can stay out on the road a long time, usually under captive cars that cannot be inter changed MOW and such. We even had RJ axles come in off the system in the *80s, that should have been pulled out of service after WWII, these were to be scrapped on first sight. There were still rib-back wheel sets then also LOL
Hope the above helps…John
Thank you John, very informative and useful.
Here’s the Grizzly Northern’s 30 ft flat with a load of wheels just received from the manufacturer.
I nipped of the pointed axle ends of the plastic wheel sets with a rail cutter, glued the axle sets together with 5 minute expoxy and painted them with PolyScale Box Car Red.
I’m waiting for someone tell me whether or not the total weight of those wheels is within load limits for that little flat. [:)]
I would say it is too heavvy for the flat seeing that it derailed the thing![(-D]