Re: Brake staff /cylinder confusion and mismatched trucks!!

Posted by Jim Courtney on Feb 19, 2023; 2:31am
URL: http://c-sng-discussion-forum.254.s1.nabble.com/Brake-staff-cylinder-confusion-and-mismatched-trucks-tp3464p18432.html

Wow, Steve, WOW!

That's a beautiful piece of CAD work!

The only quibble that I would have is the brake cylinder mounts. Unlike the D&RGW, the small "New York" brake cylinders, used on the freight cars from 1898 to 1907, didn't have a rear mount, at the rear of the reservoir. And the brackets that attached the cylinder to the sills are shown, in both Poole's and Stear's plans, as two pieces of strap metal, each about 2" wide, about 3/4" thick. They ran from the inside edge of the intermediate sill (bolted to the bottom of the sill) to the inside of the side sill, where they bent down (or up from the rail) at 90 degrees and were bolted to the inside of the side sill. The latter attachment resulted in a pair of visible bolt heads on the outside of the side sills.

Here is my rendition of the brake gear on the underframe of a St. Charles coal car, under construction:




I've come up with a system using styrene strips, PBL clevises, Tichy rivets and 0.012 wire to build up the brake levers and rods, and use the Grandt small "NY" cylinder. Your potential print looks to be much more refined.

I don't know how well the cotter pins are going to render in HO scale, but (ahem) they might print well in S scale.