the Museum has had several of these cars rattling around off in the weeds or behind the section house but the last couple of weeks we put this one to use. It is a small car…24" gauge, 30" wheel base, 14" wheels, the hopper is 5’ wide. This is the type of car a small earth products operation might use or a construction job. the car is a “Koppel” which I think is a German outfit that licenced this type of car to US and other countries manufacture in a variety of sizes and gauges.

I wanted a string of these for my little 7/8th scale steam locos to pull. LGB, Bachman, Hartland and others make or made some nice ones which would do, but they are hard to find and cost bucks. I have lots of scrap stuff that needs to be used up. I found some wheel sets cast off when I got metal wheels for some of my old cars. I have a large supply of scrap high quality marine plywood from my boat building projects.

the frame and journal boxes sawn out of 6mm (1/4") plywood. I stacked several peices of plywood and sawed them together on my band saw…remember I want a string of them!

the two halves are glued together with “doublers” which also serve as the coupler and buffer block.

brass tubing serves as the journal bearings. inserted into the wood, sawn off then opened up with a center punch and a tap from a small hammer.

glued together with super glue

old wheels inserted…more to come

the basic chassis is done…

these weird looking bits become the brackets which hold the tipper tub

stacked pieces of 4mm plywood for the tub ends ready to cut

sawing out the tub ends, enough to build two cars

these little bits are what supports the tub in the brakets

scrap aluminum is marked and cut to size in my old paper cutter

the top edges are bent over to make a stiffener

the middle is bent in a curve to match the bottom of the tub ends

assembly starts with small brads driven through the aluminum into the edges of the ends

Dang–Have I run out of storage in both my freight shed AND my albums? now what?

Either you buy some more space from Bob or takes your chances with on off site storage service… Photo bucket isn’t recommended … unless you have deep pockets.(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-money-mouth.gif)

Nice build! Fun to follow along.

I’ve been using tumblr.com as a place to put pix (here’s my tumblr blog for the djgrr). It is free, I post there (as a blog), click on the image I want to use, then copy the image URL for use here (right click on the image to copy the URL or “image address”). Tumblr has been a reliable place to put stuff for a while, so I don’t expect it to disappear. And it is free (i.e. ad supported, but you won’t see ads in the pix you post here).

Very interesting build. I like it.

here is a little video of them in operation this afternoon.

They run well. I loaded them with ballast and they track better though my little SD Warren engine huffs and puffs a bit. empty they are very light and trail along fine as long as the track is smooth and stick free, if not they scatter like chickens!

Eric Schade said:

I loaded them with ballast and they track better… empty they are very light and trail along fine as long as the track is smooth and stick free, if not they scatter like chickens!

Sorta, kinda like the real thing. (http://largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)

Neat project. I was looking at headline of plywood tipper cars and thinking, why would someone use cars to tip plywood? (http://largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-laughing.gif)

Ya gotta love English’s subtle ambiguities.

Great presentation…as always. Fun to watch. Thanks

Those look great running in a string behind your steamer.

I had to look closely but they look to be coupled with link and pins?

Nice Work, Eric

I took the easy way out and hunted down a bunch of LGB 4043 tippers, since I am retired and simply do not have the time to do all the great hand work you do!

Jerry