Does anyone know how far from Atlanta, GA a preserved wooden boxcar might be? Also, how thick were the truss rods used on the old freight cars?
Jock: Can’t help with a location of an old truss rodded boxcar, but here is a link that may provide you with some info. Around here (Kansas) many farmers bought surplus boxcars for various means of storage.
The truss rods seemed to be about 3/4" ± in diameter (IIRC)
it is from a Google search and the title and author is here:
Trains and technology: the American railroad in the nineteenth century, Volume 2 By Anthony J. Bianculli
In The American Railroad Freight Car by John White, I see several drawings of boxcars with 1” dia. truss rods, and nothing smaller. Some are 1-1/8” dia. and 1-3/8” dia. There is quite a bit of variation in the overall design of truss rods. They don’t all use turnbuckles, and there is some variation in the turnbuckles themselves. The abovementioned book is an excellent reference on early freight cars with lots of wonderful drawings. There were some really handsome freight cars in that era, and some highly specialized cars for cargo that is not carried by rail today.
Thanks for the info, both of you. I have White’s book on locomotives and knew he did one on cars but have never seen it. I need my steel toed boots on before I take the locomotive book off the shelf. It is dangerous since he added the supplement to the later addition. I want to make some vertical and horizontal wooden box cars for my American Flyer stuff. The plans in the Dollar Car book by our host here don’t seem to match up to the Northeast Scale wood that I get now and if I make them bigger than HO, the differences might show up even more.
White’s freight car book is on amazon.com, used for about $65.00. I have the softcover and it is still kind of heavy. Usually, someone mentions this on a mrr forum and the books goes rather quickly. White’s passenger car book is there also at a lower price. No doubt there are other sources.
I have built a HO scale model of the 60 ton capacity 16 wheel wood flatcar on page 386 of the freight car book. It has about 2 1/2 inch truss rods.
Rich
There’s a preserved wooden boxcar located at a railroad and traction museum near Rio Vista California ( I forget the exact name of the museum, sorry ). How far do you want to travel in your quest?
have you been to the rail museum at duluth, georgia? they may have a car like that or know where one is. all-wood boxcars lasted lots longer if they had steel underframes and far more of that type were preserved. the only actual truss-rod boxcar i know of is up here in the pacific northwest; it’a a northern pacific car on display alongside US hy 2 near davenport wa, west of spokane. a little sign by it says ‘future home of the railroad museum of the inland empire chapter NRHS’, which has most of its stuff (including a UP 4-6-2) still at the spokane county fairgrounds. arturo
There are some preserved wooden cars at North Freedom, Wisconsin, near The Dells. I believe on of them is a boxcar and the other is a baggage car with several windows, so it looks like a combine.
At Illinois Railway Museum, Union IL;