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I have been corresponding by e-mail over the last few weeks with Wfttrains about Schnabel car loads - making longer and bigger loads for the MTh Schanbel car and speculating about how far a longer load might stick out beyond the track.  He has some wonderful generator loads in addition to a lot of really nice Westinghouse cars and locos.  

 

I needed to know a little more about how long "Schnabel loads" fit on curves,  so did some testing this afternoon. 

 

Below is a picture, taken from directly above, that shows how a long load will stick across the inside of a curve.  The wooden board shown is the equivalent of a 21" load and the two plastic cages normally on the Schanbel car, all on a 60" radius curve.  I say equivalent because I have disassembled this MTH Schnabel car for a project I am building - I have removed the plastic "cages" from each end and am just connecting the two sets metal end pieces with their triple-trucks with a board.  The board is the width of the standard Schnabel load (2 3/4).  The second picture below shows a plot of stick out (or stick-in if you prefer) versus length of a Schnabel load.  Note that a 2/3/4 inch load of NO length would stick in 5/8" (it is 2 3/4 inches wide and riding over a set of rails that are about 1 1/2 inches across the outside of the outer rails).  On a 60" radius, the 21" long load that is 2 3/4 inches wide will "stick in" about 3 inches - note in the phot even its outer edge is inside of the inner out rail.  The standard Schnabel load (the one that comes with the car) is 6 inches long and sticks in about 1 1/6 inch or so on 60".  On 72" stick it is just a bit is less.  I did not measure on 48" or righter curves.  

 

These results are only approximate

Schnabel car long load

Schanbel Geometry

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  • Schnabel car long load
  • Schanbel Geometry
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Lee

 

The prototype car that the MTH model is based upon is WECX 203. Max load rating was 750,000 lbs in a package measuring 12'wide by 32' long. The Minimum recommended radius on the road for this car loaded as specified by AAR is about 300 feet or about O150 diameter track. On private track with normal handling min radius is 220 feet or O110 diameter track. Westinghouse noted in its spec that the min radius at which the loaded car would overturn is about 175 feet of about O88 diameter. The largest Westinghouse cars were WECX102 and WECX301 which were 22 axle cars as opposed to WECX203 14 axle design . They were used for generator shipments with a max length of about 40 feet. Westinghouse specified the minimum radius of this car loaded at 325 feet Your 21 inch load would be about twice the max load length of the 22 axle car so it sounds like a prototype car to carry the load represented by your board might be something like a 44 axle car and probably has a minimum recommended radius for a loaded car in the order of 350-375 ' or about an O180 diameter curve.

 

So a prototype loaded car that matches the dimensions of your experiment would likely have turned over in the curve diameters used in the experiment. But it is model railroading .

 

Enjoyed your analysis and found it interesting.

Thanks - good info.  But like you say this is model railroading, and MTH engineered this car nicely so it really tolerates a good deal of abuse like this.   The car with that load pictured actually ran along very nicely.  However, it overhung so much it took out gobs of trees that were never a problem with anything I ran before.  

 

Most important thought, it looked ridiculous, which is the ultimate deciding factor here.  I'm limiting my project to an equivalent of an eight inch load -- only two inches longer than the standard load, just because anything more looks a little -- actually a lot -- strange. 

 

 

 

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