4 Axle Heavyweight Cars- do they exist?

Lionel has made "Baby Madison" cars since 1973. In 1978, underframe details were modified to clear new 6-wheel trucks. But 4-wheel passenger cars trucks will fit any of them.

Golden Gate Depot and Atlas O have heavyweight (or "standard" / "non-streamlined") passenger cars

I have several Lionel cars n the 16001 range that are 11" long with 2 axle trucks. Nt fancy but lightd with silhouetts.

Some of the Atlas Trainman 15-inch passenger cars have 4-wheel trucks.

Thanks for the replies. The trainman stuff looks pretty good, and as you said jim-- the 16001 are 4 axle, and not too fancy. After doing some more research, what I was really looking for were "open platform" cars, which appear to almost always have 2 axle trucks. The open platform cars that I see doing a Google search were made by Jackson and Sharp. As for as O gauge three rail, I have not been able to find any ready to run cars, but apparently there are Labelle Kits, and a bunch of On3 stuff. I also found a thread about putting three rail trucks under On30 cars, and it apparently does not work out too well.

GGD may have something-- but I could not find it on their website.

If you are looking for much older wooden cars look at the MTH 19th century era premier cars they could pass as Jackson Sharp, they have open platforms and 4 wheel trucks. Usually  they sold in three packs. Not sure thier lengths.

if those will not work Lionel has recently done a remold on the roofs of thier passenger cars that go with the General (4-4-0). Now they have Clerstory roofs and open platforms. So far these have only been offered in a few sets.

I have a few of the Atlas HW shorty cars....VERY nice cars. 

AMCDave-- do you have the model numbers for the Atlas cars you have?  -- thought I might be able to Google a picture. Also-- it looks like the MTH wood sided cars are what I have been looking for, I just did not know how to ask the question. Open platform early wood sided cars.

All you guys have been a LOT of help.

On many railroads heavyweight cars ran on two-axle trucks. Pick your prototype.

By the way: GGD is releasing Harriman cars that are somewhat shorter than  "tyoical" 75-ft cars.

Very true.  This is considerable fallacy in embracing this chimera of 75' or 80' cars as being the only possible scale heavyweight cars and that 6 wheel trucks are the rule.

There are prototypes for all sorts are variations on length and truck type and style.

Open platform cars - MTH cars would be what's in production recently in any numbers - 60', I think.  There are the Le Belle kit cars and if you look further back in time, there were open platform kit cars from Walthers and then a few others like Exacta and Alexander.  Of course, if you want some of the best early open platform cars, there were sets imported by SMR (truly outstanding), and some from Beaver Creek that are also exceptional.

The SMR cars ARE truly outstanding, but they are quite expensive!!! Someday, maybe I will have the time for a Labelle kit. For right now, MTH ay be "close enough"--

Jeffrey

I second Silver Lake's suggestions of MTH wooden cars and Lionel GENERAL cars.

Details on new GENERAL cars really look good.

The Labelle Kits are fun and not hard to build. This one started life in a box as an open platform car and I made it into a summer open air car. I used Atlas four wheel trucks. Southern Pacific had many commuter cars that were short but looked like heavyweights. All had four wheel trucks. Don

Thanks ReadinFan for posting the picture of the Lionel set with the open platform cars. those are nice looking, and I had not been able to google any photos showing those cars.

Scale rail-- looks like it is snowing on Maui-- and that car is beautiful! I may try a Labelle kit when I get further along on my layout.

I am just getting back into the hobby after many years -- and I am learning something every day. ---Jeffrey 

Over the years some of the Heavyweight passenger cars were lightened by removing some of the older and heavier equipment, under the car.  Also, the four wheel trucks were considerably lighter than the six wheel trucks and this helped lighten the cars to make them acceptable with four wheel trucks.  So, it wasn't unusual to see four wheel trucks replace the older six wheel  trucks under older, riveted construction passenger cars.   Remember. the criterion for determining the need for four or six wheel trucks was actual axle weight.   When they replaced the six wheel trucks under heavy weight cars, that change alone might lighten the car weight by several tons.

The   six wheel trucks were needed to support heavier loads, they generally put six wheel trucks under those cars.  The aforementioned Atlas, 60' "shorty" cars are typical.  The baggage and RPO cars all had six wheel trucks, but the more common passenger cars all had four wheel trucks.  A friend of mine bought a former Pennsy business car, a heavyweight design car with an open obs platform but with ice-activated air conditioning.  This car had lightweight, roller bearing equipped trucks and rode extremely well on them.

Paul Fischer

As has been said already,  lot of steam railroads not only had four-axle steel passenger cars, but a lot of those cars were shorter than the eighty and eighty five-foot cars most of us think of as "standard" pre-streamliner passenger cars. The Atlas Trainman coaches are models of a design built for the Chicago and North Western, the upcoming Golden Gate sixty-foot heavyweights are "Harriman standards" of the sorts built for the SP, the UP, and also the Illinois Central during the time the IC was under UP control.

Most, if not all, of the Pennsylvania Railroad's fleet of P-70 coaches had two-axle trucks. I'd also point out that roads like the Erie, the Central Railroad of New Jersey, the Reading, the New Haven and (I think) the New York Central also had cars with two-axle trucks.

I always liked the 72 ft Northern Pacific cars... not sure who made them? Very few pictures of them....