ID of this trailing truck

Stew,

The basic trailing truck is the same on the Hudsons as well as the Notherns.  But the one on the right with the upright is only used on certain Northern's (I think).  The two I have don't have the upright, but I've seen them elsewhere, but I can't remember exactly on which ones.  Then, it could also be an add-on by a tinkerer. Is it spot welded, or somehow else affixed?

Thanks for responding  Jerry. The upright is spot welded. Definitely a factory detail.

OK.  Definitely factory.  The whole idea of the little upright is to keep the truck from sagging when the loco is lifted.  The Northerns are the only ones that it will fit on.

The same setup can be found on some of the older K4's with a 2 wheel trailing truck. Looks like it was designed to utilize the horizontal bar on the rear of the boiler to prevent excess trailing truck movement. That bar was later installed with a riveted round nut to which the tender was attached to with a z shaped metal drawbar.

 

Rich

I checked out a couple of my boxed sets and found the version with the "extra" bracket on every 320 and 322 Hudson in my collection from 1946, 1947, and 1948.  The 1948 322 was a very early one with 2-prong crosshead guides (it came in a 4611A set with black track). I know the 322 changed sometime in 1948 to include the L-shaped crosshead guides, but I don't have any of them to compare. I did check a 1949 322AC as well as a 324AC and a 325AC. None of these had the extra bracket, so it looks like maybe it was dropped before 1949.

My earliest Northerns are from 1948. I checked 332, 332AC, 332DC, 334DC, K335, and 336 and didn't find any with the extra bracket. Sorry, I have no '46-'47 332 SIT versions to check.

Craig, that is interesting you have a 4611A set from early 1948 with black track. I always thought it was part of 1946 sets only. 

I have a Hudson from 1948 with the rear truck with the extra vertical bracket. I also have 2 1948 Hudsons without the extra bracket. 

AmFlyer posted:

Craig, that is interesting you have a 4611A set from early 1948 with black track. I always thought it was part of 1946 sets only. 

I have a Hudson from 1948 with the rear truck with the extra vertical bracket. I also have 2 1948 Hudsons without the extra bracket. 

Tom,

I was surprised to find that 4611A set with the black track. I got this particular boxed set from the original owner (my former boss) and it seems totally original. It also had a 706 uncoupler with the black painted housing. My only other similar 706 came in a very late 1947 4603 set. As i mentioned, the 322 in this set had the early style 2-prong crosshead guides. (Tom: what type of crosshead guides do your 1948 Hudsons have?)

I had Dave Garrigues examine this set and he also pointed out the the earliest 1948 Hudsons had the wiring from the tender to the backhead as individual wires instead of wrapped in a harness. The 322 in this set was wired this way. Another thing Dave pointed out was that the black 706 uncoupler in my 1948 set was slightly different from the one in the 1947 set in that the uncoupling "rails" were straight in the 1948 set as opposed to slightly "splayed" in the 1947 version.  When we lost Dave Garrigues last year we surely lost a wealth of information about American Flyer trains. 

Craig Donath posted:

My earliest Northerns are from 1948. I checked 332, 332AC, 332DC, 334DC, K335, and 336 and didn't find any with the extra bracket.

Craig,

I was wrong on the Northerns.  My collection isn't all that extensive, and I was relying on my memory for exactly where I saw the trucks with the bracket.  Since only the Northerns and Hudsons used that four wheel truck, I picked the wrong locomotive.  Am I forgiven?

Murphy's Law Corollary #73: In a guess between any two choices, nine times out of ten, you will be wrong. 

Craig, when I lived in the Chicago area in the early '90s I went to the DuPage show every month. Dave was always there with a small table and some interesting oddball pieces. Probably more knowledge than the rest of us put together. In those days John Heck would take all my money!

I will look for my 322's later today but I know the ones with the "normal" trailing truck do not have individual wires, they have the harness.

Well, I just now saw this thread. Yes, the extra piece was used on Northern and Hudson trailing trucks until about EARLY 1948 production. It was also on the two-wheel trailing trucks.  Someone at ACG realized it wasn't really needed, so that bit was dropped (expense of metal, stamping and spot welding eliminated). You will find one more variation on the four-wheel trailing trucks; the sides were modified to eliminate the raised area over the rear axle on the 5-digit engines.

The early separate uncouplers (not made as part of the track) have brass housings painted black and the "lift bars" are bent at the top to provide a wider lifting surface. I don't think this was done for more than one production run when it was decided that just the edge of the lift bar metal was "good enough" and that eliminated one more manufacturing step.

Nope, ACG pieces are not "all alike"!  The same thing can be said for Model T Fords; although parts can be interchanged for most pieces from 1909 to 1927, they aren't all alike! The engineers were constantly changing things to make production cheaper, and reliability greater.

traindavid posted:

Nope, ACG pieces are not "all alike"!  The same thing can be said for Model T Fords; although parts can be interchanged for most pieces from 1909 to 1927, they aren't all alike! The engineers were constantly changing things to make production cheaper, and reliability greater.

Tell me all about it!  As a retirement job, I drive a Model T at The Henry Ford's Greenfield Village.  If you have an hour, I can tell you all about the cars!  I put more miles on a Model T in the Summer than my road car, and they're a ball to drive!

Here's a pic from the 1946 catalog showing the upright bracket on a Hudson chassis:

Actually, this picture is a somewhat doctored version of the image that appeared in the 1941 catalog:

Not a bad job of making 3-rail tubular track look like 2-rail! I guess it would have been difficult to show the insulating "whitewalls" that were required on the S-gauge version. I guess the point is that the elongated bracket was a carryover from the earlier O-gauge version an later deemed unnecessary as David Dewey pointed out. As David also pointed out, the extra bracket was phased out early in 1948 production so may well have appeared on the SIT Northerns of '46-'47. Examples of these rare beasts, and even photographs of them, are hard to come by these days. 

Jerry, I HAVE an hour!! As a model T owner, I love to hear about Ts. Right now the big talk is about the changes in the OCF this year. Folks are NOT happy! Craig, the only difference I can see in the two illustrations is the elimination of the numbers and arrows to the parts. You'd think they could have modified the boiler to look like the '46 production!

I checked some of my Hudsons and the two 1948 engines have the normal trailing truck. The truck with the vertical bracket is on a newer (1950) engine and was evidently a repair.

Page 38 of Greenberg's Guide to American Flyer Volume 2, First Edition has a picture of a 332 with the vertical piece on the trailing truck. It is a 1947 engine and is credited to the R Tufts collection. I have both of the catalogs pictured above and never noticed the trailing truck detail. The lack of white insulators on the drive wheels in the 1946 catalog always caught my attention.

traindavid posted:

Jerry, I HAVE an hour!! As a model T owner, I love to hear about Ts.

David,

Then, contact me off list....   Email address in profile.

Jerry and I are in regular touch with each other now--mostly car talk so far! Isn't this forum fun?