Indiana Railroad Highspeed 3 car train

Added a third car to my Indiana Railroad "Highspeed" Multiple Unit train. This is actually a dummy car.

New in my Library: History of the Jewett Car Company

From Small Town to Downtown

A History of the Jewett Car Company, 1893-1919

Lawrence A. Brough and James H. Graebner

2004, Indiana University Press, 272 pages.

About 100 photos, including some rare, but very few car diagrams.

Nice written and well reserached story of the life and the death of this Ohio car builder.  Extensive appendix trying to list all delivered cars, very useful for traction researchers and modelers.

Sometimes it is expected to miss, but it works

Today, I built a styrene frame for my resin printed interurban boxcar. This is a "beta" car, the final chassis will be printed also.

I screwed the bogies and built a radial coupler from a cannibalized Kadee coupler. Then I attached another improvized radial coupler to my big Suydam Niles. This couplers are neither well finished nor well adjusted.

To my entire surprise, it works.

Not only in pull operation, but also pushing the trailer with excessive high speed through my sharp S-curves.

Two short videos :

 

Haps and mishaps with H0 Kadee arch bar trucks

I purchased some pairs of H0 Kadee #501 arch bar trucks for my Interurban box cars. This bogies have a real fine look. But on trial runs on my small street running layout they derailed on sharp S-curves and some switch frogs.

This was a great deception because I counted much on this trucks for my projects. You may say that I must avoid sharp S-curves, but what is a trolley freight operation without sharp S-curves?

Finally, by "try and error", I found the reason. The Kadee truck with their real three piece articulation needs a wheel staying well in the rail and who doesn't mount.

Kadee with simple plastic wheels

The solution is simple : change the Kadee wheels with one of the cheapest Bachman (or so) plastic wheels on steel axles of same size found in my scrap box. Now they are going through all curves.

The surplus Kadee wheels can be reused in a rigid bogie like the Tichy Train Group plastic arch bar truck. Nothing is lost, everything is transformed.

C&LE box car in HO

C&LE boxcar in HO

A trial to find out the "tuscan red" who matches. The trailer is still missing the final trucks, couplers and the underframe. The grooves of the sheeting will be smaller for the next print.

Now, I need some ideas for the decals.

(update, better photo uploaded)