Q:What is the min Radius for 1990's ERA

I hear ya brakie, its just I have been out of the hobby for a while and now that im back into it I was expecting the internet to have a wealth of information.....dangit it does...lol.
 

Russ Bellinis

Active Member
If you did find one web site that listed all of the locomotive types that all of the different railroads ran, it would probably be full of mistakes. It can take a lot of research just to get a comprehensive list for one railroad, let alone trying to get a list together for all railroads.
 
ya I hear ya....years ago I got my hands on Slides from the Early days of Conrail in the hopes that one day I would be able to model the early years of them. What type of Piggy back cars did they use back then?
 

green_elite_cab

Keep It Moving!
Russ Bellinis said:
I would suggest laying out a circle of track at 26 inches to see how those auto racks handle it. I don't think you can get away with less than 30 inches with 89 foot cars. You need to test at least 2 hooked together. They may go around the tighter radius singly, but then derail when hooked together.

they will work in just about ever case with on 22"s, and i've gotten them to stay on 18"s, but i would stick to 22" or greater.
 

Russ Bellinis

Active Member
gottaBreal said:
ya I hear ya....years ago I got my hands on Slides from the Early days of Conrail in the hopes that one day I would be able to model the early years of them. What type of Piggy back cars did they use back then?

I'm not sure, but I think Conrail started in the early to mid '70's. Piggy back cars would have been 89 foot flats, & piggy back trailers would have been 42' for the newest ones with a bunch of older 40 footers mixed in. I was working for a trucking company in 1975-1976, and the longest trailers we had were 42' long. At the time all of the states along the Missippi River had 55' overall length limits for 18 wheelers. We could get the cabover tractors shortened just enuough to get under 55 feet with the forty two foot trailers. The conventional tractors could not pull anything longer than 40 feet and get under the 55 foot limit.

I was working in the harbor when the first double stack cars came in, in fact Sea Land had the first double stack cars; and I was working for Sea Land when they got them. That would have been around 1980 or 1981.
 
Ya thanks alot Russ B. lots of good info there, I think im going to push the dates back to 1980 to about 1985. I think this is perfect since I can model some of the old units which had been painted black with CR letters.
 

Russ Bellinis

Active Member
Triplex said:
I thought double-stacks weren't mass-produced until '84?

I suggest checking http://crcyc.railfan.net/ for information on Conrail engines and other equipment. Unfortunately, the only annual rosters they have are 1976, 1994 and 1995.

Might be, but Sea Land had a few sets of the first thrall cars running on the S.P. at least a year before anyone else had them out here. I think it may have been an idea that Sea Land commissioned, and it took the industry another year or two to catch up. Actually, I saw Sea Land containers stacked double on a few depressed center flat cars on the Santa Fe at least a year before the Thrall cars came out. I saw them moving through a grade crossing at speed once. I have looked everywhere I can think of, but haven't seen pics of those cars anywhere. I worked for Sea Land at the time, so I know that the containers they used were 35 footers. Sea Land used 35 footers long after every body else had gone to 20 footers & 40 footers. A 35 footer just about completely filled the well in the center of the depressed center flat. It was also not a heavy duty flat, it had standard 2 axle trucks, probably 70 ton.
 
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