which would you get for your layout?
Bowser jenny coal cars or walther’s ore cars, my dream layout is a smallish mining comunity set in the 40’s-50’s, they will be pulled by a heavy mike which i am building by bowser and 2) 0-6-0 by bachmann and maybe a docksider.
also any sugestions on the construction of the mike?
also recently i saw something about friction wheels on rolling stock what are they?
The Bowser ore cars are actually the old Stewart cars, which are a Pennsylvania RR 1960s prototype. The Walthers cars are a 1930s-1950s prototype, and so would fit in with your steam-era layout better. Of course, for some REALLY neat and old looking ore cars, there’s always the Tichy kits:
http://www.tichytraingroup.com/index.php?page=view_product.php&id=41&category=Freight+Car+Kits
As for “friction” versus roller bearing trucks: in the days before about 1960, trucks didn’t have roller bearings in them (except for a few rare instances). The bearing area on trucks was the steel axle and two bronze or brass bearings, with a layer of oil lubricating the parts. Roller bearings were popularized after the steam era as another cost cutting and safety enhancing aid.
This is a common solid bearing truck (usually misidentified as a “friction bearing” truck):
http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-1012
This is a common roller bearing truck:
http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-1005
Considering the fact that rolling element bearings are referred to as “Anti-friction bearings”, I do not see where solid bearings are misidentified as “friction bearings”. In solid, or friction bearings, there is relative motion (hence, friction) along all contact surfaces of the bearing. In a rolling element bearing, there is at least a portion of the contact area between the bearing surfaces where there is no motion, creating no friction.
The “friction” bearing moniker was created by the marketing department at Timken to help sell thier roller bearings. It has nothing to do with engineering.
Funny you should say that about Timken. Did they form the AFBMA group all by themselvse (AFBMA - Anti-Friction Bearing Manufacturers Association). There is a whole order of magnitude difference in the coefficient of friction between a plain bearing and a rolling element bearing. That is from my Design of Machine Elements text book.