You never know what you might find on the web. Today I found a train order for Extra 271 East, for August 27, 1952, to run on the Westward Main from Spruce Street to The Tamaqua Scale at 4:26 am.

Here is a piece of paper handed up to a crew of a Reading F7 58 years ago and it put a smile on my face today thinking about movement.

I’ve been having a conversation with Matt Forsyth for the last month or so about wheel standards. We both were involved with Proto48 when we first started in O scale, so the NMRA standard of 1.172 for wheel width is not something either of us like.

One of my early lesson on using my lathe was to turn down the width of some Gem PRR B6sa drivers. The drivers started out at 0.175 close to the NMRA specification, we turned them down to 0.145 which greatly improved their appearance.

Matt has chosen to set his standards at a wheel width of 0.135″ which really makes for a fine looking wheel. He keeps sending photos like this one of an Intermountain truck with the .135 wheels under them. I had to give it a try.

Matt was working with the Intermountain Replacement wheelset that is quickly becoming the standard wheelset for a lot of modelers. First off that wheelset is way too wide at 0.162″ so it’s a natural to be thinned. Matt has been taking off the material from the backside of the wheelset. So I set up the lathe and started. The wheelsets turn very easily and were thinned to their new widths. I experimented with 0.145″, 0.140 and 0.135 taking all the material off the back of the wheel just as Matt had instructed.

They looked great! I set them up in a spare Intermountain truck and had a good look at them. Again, I say they look great! A big improvement over the stock Intermountain wheelset.

So I began to test the trucks with the new wheelsets on some of the turnouts I’ve built on the Fasttracks jigs. They rolled right through with no trouble. But as I looked closer I noticed that there was a lot of room between the guardrails and the running rails on the wheels. On the 0.135′ wheels if the one wheel was against the guardrail then the opposite wheel could hit the opposite side of the frog point. I should point out this didn’t happen on my test but it could have if the car was forcing the truck in that direction.

The first thought was simple enough tighten up the flange-way standards at the same time as the wheel standards. But My brother is also an O scaler and my layout will most likely be the only option from him to ever operate any of his O scale models. So do I really want to change the flange-way standards?

Emails were flying back and forth between Matt and myself about the flangeway issue and the back-to-back dimension. Matt went though on one email and pointed out a half dozen manufacturers who all had different wheel widths and back-to-back dimensions.

So I decided to check back with the NMRA and see exactly where the standard is set at. To my surprise the standard had been revised last February. See below

I thought Wheel Note 5 was very important, it states: “The adjusting of the back-to-back spacing is highly recommended to meet the target wheel check gauge (K) specification.” Here is the NMRA pointing out that there needs to be flexibility in the back-to-back dimension to meet the more important dimension of the inside of the flange to the back side of the opposite wheel dimension.

With this I’ve started a new page to record the different dimensions of different manufactures wheels. I was surprised how far off some of them where.

Turns out the new NMRA standard is where I wanted to move my standard to. I think the 0.145 wheel is a nice compromise in width and there are already commercial replacement wheelset for the width from North West Short Line. I had already started to go there with the purchase of some North West Short Line replacement wheels for the Weaver drives.

My next experiments with thinning the Intermountain wheels are starting from setting the back-to-back dimension first and than machining the front of the Intermountain wheel to get to the desired width. This will be a lot more work than taking the material off the back, but I think it will make a better operating wheelset in the long run.

As I explore Shamokin as a possible modeling location, one of the key structures to build will be the engine house at the East end of the Yard.

Back in May of 72 my brother Bobb was chasing an excursion in Shomokin. He sent me some scans of the engine house that he shot that day.

Here we see the North Side of the engine house with one track still going to the building.

Here in the view of the south side of the engine house with no tracks going in the building.

South Side Shamokking Engine House. Closer view of the engine house doors.

Shamokin Yard with Excursion train coming into town.

Well I decided to take a little ride today, to visit the Southern New England Model Railroad Club layout and attend their O scale Show located in Gardner Massachusetts. From my home in South Jersey Google Maps said it was a 5.5 hour drive so I wanted to get an early start. The wife and I got into the car around 4:30 am. We arrived at the show a little before 10:00 am.

The show was not as big as some of the other O scale shows I’ve attended, but it also wasn’t as small as some of the shows in the past. There was a different selection of dealers at the show which was a refreshing change of pace.

After walking around the show, I headed down to the basement of the auditorium to see the club layout. I didn’t see a track plan posted anywhere so I could not tell exactly how far along they are. But what they had built was working nicely.

One of the highlights for me at the show was getting to see Bob Jones’ display. He had a Car Works Baldwin Vo-1000 inching back and forth on his test track. It had a High Sierra reduction gear tower installed along with a low current draw motor and an HO DCC sound system. The DCC did slow down some of the running speed but most of the work was being done by the High Sierra reduction gear-tower.

Unfortunately it is another example of by the time you see a product installed and working, they are no longer produced. I know after seeing it work, if they were still in production, they would be install in all my switchers with the Weaver drives.

After a pleasant hour or so in the show and the club, it was time to head back and enjoy the rest of the day with the wife.

PRR 166658 GLa – George Losse collection

The Pennsylvania Railroad class GLa is a 50 ton twin open hopper car. Construction began in 1904 and continued through 1991. A total of 30,256 were built for the PRR or acquired from various coal companies that built the same design.

The April 1956 OER lists 21,840 GLa’s on the roster. Compare this to Reading’s 13015 total hopper cars, or Western Maryland’s 8006 total hopper cars and you begin to see the size of the PRR fleet of GLa’s.

The GLa was originally built with K brakes and later converted to AB. Very few GLa were updated with power brake wheels most cars retained their verticle brake staff. One exception would be the second hand cars acquired from Berwind-White, which had modern power hand brake hardware.

It’s interesting to note that the overall dimensions of the GLa are close to the USRA Standard 50-Ton Twin Hopper which was designed almost 15 years later. Inside Length is one inch shorter at 30′ 5″. Inside width 9′ 5 1/2″ is a half an inch wider then the USRA Twin. The GLa is 8″ shorter to the top of side cord at 10′ 0″ but the side height is only 5″ shorter as the bottom of the car side sits three inches lower than the USRA Twin. The GLa has a capacity only 197 cu. ft. less that the USRA Twin. These similiarities will work in our favor when it comes time to build a fleet of these cars.

BCWX 4026 GLa – George Losse collection

WMX 1404 GLa – George Losse collection

References:
Keystone Article
PRR Steel Open Hopper Cars – John Teichmoeller
January 1952 Official Railway Equipment Register
September 1953 Official Railway Equipment Register
April 1956 Official Railway Equipment Register