November issue of the other magazine has a Focus on Classics article regarding transition freight cars of the early 1970s.
Originally Posted by Mike W.:
This is one of my favorite threads. I love digging at these details from the past. Whats special about the 6560 Bucyrus Erie Crane Car from 1971?
In addition to the fact that it carried over the postwar 6560 number (although in the catalog it used the new 6- prefix), it was also similar to the aforementioned 9150 Gulf tank car in that early versions used leftover Postwar era parts on it; in this case original AAR trucks & wheels; not the modified versions to work with the fast angle wheels and new uncoupling plungers. So they are fairly hard to find (especially the original boxes) and can command premium prices.
Click on this link to see a pic of one that was auctioned off several years ago.
I wonder if MPC chose the symington wayne truck because the person in charge of retooling trucks knew nothing about trains and thought that was a normal truck to model?
Are the plastic trucks that LTI replaced the symington wayne with considered AAR?
Originally Posted by Mike W.:
I wonder if MPC chose the symington wayne truck because the person in charge of retooling trucks knew nothing about trains and thought that was a normal truck to model?
Are the plastic trucks that LTI replaced the symington wayne with considered AAR?
In answer to the first question: Most likely. Someone at MPC probably was rummaging through some railroad literature and just stumbled upon that truck design and decided to go with it because it looked modern.
In answer to your second question, the new truck design LTI came out with was not based on an AAR design; rather, it is roughly based on a prototype ASF ride-control freight truck (probably 100 ton). I say roughly because the shape of the open cavities on the truck sideframes aren't as symmetrical in relation to the truck as the real ones are (probably a carryover from the Symington-Wayne truck so that they wouldn't have to re-design the snap-in plastic pickup roller assemblies MPC designed for the S-W truck) and there's too much "clunk" below the roller bearing journals. But it's definitely a much more representative of modern roller bearing trucks than what MPC came out with.
