[chrisb]

I was looking thru a book about railroads and the ganite quarries in Barre, VT.
The were some very wooden flat cars that used truss rods over a single post
which I would call a King post rather than 2 queen posts. Has any one built any of these? I bought some queen posts but as ther are to be used in pairs, hey have a slight angle to lean toward the rod end. Likely these cars must have use shorter posts. I have been making truss rods from 1/16 brazing rod threaded with 1-72 nuts and threaded into the turn buckle. The 1-72 die cuts this size rod pretty easy. Anyone make any of these flats?

 

[Big65Dude]

Chris -


Just for the sake of illustration, here's a shot of an old Lionel caboose I bashed several years ago.

It doesn't represent any particular prototype - it's just a cute li'l caboose that I had some fun playing around with. It does, however have king posts supporting its truss rods (because there simply wasn't enough room for a more conventional arrangement.)

 

[peter bunce]

Hi Chris,

If they are early vehicles the single post would be used as there was not enough space for a couple.
Early vehicles used needle beams (generally two), and these were tightened up at the end of the vehicle as they did NOT have turnbuckles -they came later.

The posts would be to gain extra depth (over the needle beam) because the vehicle you intend to build are short, just add on the outside of the end beams a NBW casting to represent the place where the tightening of the truss rods was done.

The posts could be very simple - just a fixing plate, then a piece of rod, with an inverted 'U' to hold the truss rod in place. Bolted together I would think in early days, later they could have been welded together. Later still they gained a cross shape central portion that replaced the rod, to add more strength, and the truss rods became 4 - all the extras were to allow more weight to be carried on the vehicle.

 

[chrisb]

Thanks for the feed back. It would make sense that the rods were tension at the end beams
rather than a turn buckle in a king post arrangement. The car length I'm looking at would be 24 feet.
Is it likely these had only 2 truss rods ? I need to look at the book again and see how many nuts at the end beam.

 

[peter bunce]

Hi,

Early 24 footers only had a couple of truss rods certainly, as did 26 and 30 footers as well. In addition to the two truss rods there were also a couple of small rods clse to the center line that held the blacks over the couplers - don't include these.

This is from the Ron Rudnick books of the Colorado Central and the DSP&PRR.