I recently ran across a couple of old sets of reefer car sides. They are for
40' cars. I'd like to build cars to put these on. Normally I would assume
that arch bar trucks are appropriate for these but I've noticed most of
the Atlas cars I've seen have Bettendorf trucks on them. I have both
kinds of trucks and would just like to use the right ones. The build date
printed on these is 1923 if that helps. Thanks for any info.
Geoff
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Depends on what model year you model to. By Dec. 31 1939 Archbar trucks were banned by the federal government. Bettendorf trucks came on the scene in 1903 and had many evolution of design. The Andrews truck was used allot in the early years. Here is a link for reading...
Depends on what model year you model to. By Dec. 31 1939 Archbar trucks were banned by the federal government. Bettendorf trucks came on the scene in 1903 and had many evolution of design. The Andrews truck was used allot in the early years. Here is a link for reading...
If one does the reading: "They were banned from interchange service starting December 31, 1939."
They were on captive use for a good while longer.
On cars like those, I would be awful tempted to put on Andrews trucks. They sure were on a lot of cars from that era, including the USRA cars. I don't think that private owner reefers like those would be in captive use though.
Thanks very much for the link and info. Very informative. It looks like there
are lot's of options during this era.
Depends on what model year you model to. By Dec. 31 1939 Archbar trucks were banned by the federal government. Bettendorf trucks came on the scene in 1903 and had many evolution of design. The Andrews truck was used allot in the early years. Here is a link for reading...
If one does the reading: "They were banned from interchange service starting December 31, 1939."
They were on captive use for a good while longer.
Yes for one year later, however since they became a liability allot of railroads upgraded.
Depends on what model year you model to. By Dec. 31 1939 Archbar trucks were banned by the federal government. Bettendorf trucks came on the scene in 1903 and had many evolution of design. The Andrews truck was used allot in the early years. Here is a link for reading...
If one does the reading: "They were banned from interchange service starting December 31, 1939."
They were on captive use for a good while longer.
Yes for one year later, however since they became a liability allot of railroads upgraded.
Still, arch bar trucks didn't disappear entirely:
Rusty
Andrews was not really a truck type. The Andrews side frame was a direct replacement for the arched bars of an arch bar truck. It allowed the railroad to reuse most the the arch bar truck components including the bolt on journal boxes. The reason the arch bar trucks were outlawed in interchange by the AAR was that the bent bars that made up the side frames tended to break at the bends. Cars not in interchange service lasted in service with arch bar trucks into the 1980s
i believe that PFE used cast steel side frames on their large order of wooden refers right WWI. I do not know if other refer operators followed suit. For a car built in 1923, either arch bar or Bettendorf trucks could have been used. I do not think the Andrews side frame was introduced this early.
The May 2013 issue of Model Railroad Hobbyist has a comprehensive article about freight car trucks by Richard Hendrickson:
http://mrhmag.com/sites/all/th...H_issue_013-05-L.xml
Larry Kline
David, Andrews trucks came on the scene by 1910. And if it isn't a truck type, what is it? Yes, the design was to reuse as much of the old archbar parts as possible, but everything I've seen calls it a design or type of truck. According to the article in bowestym's link the last archbars were built for the B&O in 1928, so five years before would indicate a technology on the way out.
A Bettendorf is a Bettendorf when it was manufactured by the Bettendorf Car Company. It has been a common label applied to AAR cast trucks with intergral journals. As you can see in Richard's informative article, there were many different suppliers of this style truck. To be accurate, the truck should be called a AAR double truss if you don't know the supplier.
Gene
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