Large Scale Central

OK fellow LGB bashers, anyone ever made a longer four wheel car?

Modeling
#1

All-

During some wheeling and dealing between Mr. Kevin Strong and myself, he got an old Porter of mine, and I got two coaches, and an LGB 3060/1 coach…sans underframe, trucks and steps.

Had two ideas in my head…

Idea one was to take the chassis that was once part of the “G Scale Mad” raffle Newqida Saxon “Reko” car I won a few years back. The chassis is fine, the other bits did not do well in the sun tho!! HOWEVER, to shorten the chassis, the two trucks would almost be touching. So I passed on this idea.

Idea two was to take one of the few assorted spare 300mm frames I have and make a longer underframe for the car. This would include moving the axels further in from the buffer beams due to the larger landings on these cars, so the wheels would be centered under the first pair of windows. I have always liked longer four wheel cars, and always wanted one of the early RhB ones from LGB, but they are a tad hard to find, and a bit pricey, and I have the body here already.

So…

Efforts so far have involved a razor saw, a couple bottles of Staropramen (for the builder, not the car) the body, and the underframe. Things are just cut now, nothing glued as of yet.

I have some coupler “blocks” used by LGB for the Swiss type boxcars that move the axels further into the underframe of the car, and can make the arm of the coupler mounting longer as needed.

So far, all looks good to me, but I wanted to check with the otehr LGB bashers for any tips or ideas?

Thanks!

#2

Garrett, I have done numerous lengthened coaches based on the ubiquitous 4-wheel generic coach body. some were made as four-axle versions and others retained their original two axles. One even finished up as an older style four single axle unit with the axles mounted in the centre of the car’s length. the individual axles had approximately 3/8" lateral movement and coulds track down to 10 foot diameter (no less).

(http://www.lscdata.com/users/tim_brien/_forumfiles/maddcol.JPG)

#3

it will depend on the radii of your curves, what you can get away with.

the longest LGB four wheel conversions i have seen, were about 500 mm long.
two 300 mm passenger cars. from both one landing was cut away, from one the wall with the door too, to form a two-compartment coach.
the “inner” aixles were taken away, the “outer” ones left in the original position.

(edit, they looked just like those in the pic above, only wit just two aixles)

but on the other hand i am planning to shorten my newqida freight cars, because they don’t behave very good on sharp curves. the distance between aixles is now 190 mm - versus 130 mm on the 300 mm cars from LGB.

#4

Garrett, here is a two-axle coach underway. Second is a fantasy combine car. If you need longer coupler mount arms then the bolster from the Bachmann Jackson & Sharp coaches is a direct replacement for the LGB item. Similarly, the Bachmann coach sideframes fit the shorter LGB European and American standard gauge bolster/coupler mount arms. This gives a bit of variety without having to modify the existing coupler mount arm length.

(http://www.lscdata.com/users/tim_brien/_forumfiles/lscttl.JPG)

(http://www.lscdata.com/users/tim_brien/_forumfiles/lscttn.JPG)

#5

On long 4-wheel cars I would think that at a certain length you’d have the wheel flanges bind up against rail on curves as their angles are so different to each other since axles can’t pivot like trucks do.

#6

Forrest,
Since 1968 all LGB four-wheel cars have incorporated a pivotting axle/truck design. With the numerous two-axle lengthened cars that I have made, track diameter is not an issue. The cars behave much like a typical American piece of rolling stock with two trucks under it. A single LGB axle pivots in the same fashion as a truck would behave, aligning itself with the rail. I have made three and four axle cars that do suffer with smaller diameter, as the amount of lateral play built into the car axle determines the minimum diameter. A three axle car will track comfortably down to around six foot diameter and a four axle (early German/Prussian coaches were four-axled) down to about ten foot diameter. LGB and Piko engineered pivotting trucks that allowed their three axle cars to track down to four foot diameter. Not having the tooling at my disposal that these companies have, I simply relied on incorporating the maximum amount of sideplay possible within the confines of the stock underframe.

#7

Thanks for the tips, now to get some styrene to make a new underframe!