Re: Eight wheel Caboose on C&Sng?

Posted by Derrell Poole on Apr 06, 2015; 9:23pm
URL: http://c-sng-discussion-forum.254.s1.nabble.com/Eight-wheel-Caboose-on-C-Sng-tp488p2004.html

Well, preserving the well being of babies is far more noble than this endeavor - so don't knock it. Its just a matter of a sense about some things after a bunch of "association" with vaguely similar other things. It all comes down to this - physics.

And the pursuit of what's True.

What's true is that I don't know either. But after some semblance of cogitation I find it more difficult to regard the braces as grab iron. It just seems that, of all the options for placing grab irons for the safety of the crew (in the days when it took an act of Congress to force industries to consider their employees with a little more regard), that they would have chosen this particular (imo) awkward arrangement. Why not bolt a standard grab iron to the top of the walkway?

I think I offered a possible explanation why there weren't corner braces at the A end of 304's cupola; it sat on top of the end wall of the caboose - inherently more rigid. We see the corner braces well before the cars were rebuilt - even before the TOC. They probably discovered quite early on that it was a matter of months rather than years that they began having window issues. Just how much movement do you need to jam a window? (Fractions of an inch, I'll wager.) Granted we don't know what interior structure was installed under the center lookouts of the pre 1908 cars but it might have been inadequate to the point that they moved the cupolas to one end or the other as a means of mitigating structural problems. (Speaking of which there is a plethora of possible structure bracing on the insides of the cars.) Perhaps the inboard corners were braced in anticipation of continuing problems with a face of the cupola not so well fixed to the car frame. After 1915 they removed the corner braces because they had taken other measures that were far more effective - perhaps including the cross braces in the side windows. But to answer your question; I don't know if there was a period with neither X braces in the windows and corner braces were used. But I kinda doubt it.

As you can see there are any number of explanations we can come up with. I think this is a good thing. Unless we can find documentation to es-plain it to us we will likely never know for certain. What we have is a topic that if we batter and burse enough, we might have the ability to determine what was likely. Let us not fear to bring our little lambs to the alter for slaughter. Some of them might turn out to be golden and some of them piggies.