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