[MOCs] Various American Freight Cars

[Commander Wolf]

Hi EB!

I haven't posted in a long time, but I have actually been building stuff. I promise.

I had been looking to put together an american freight train for some time now: I originally thought I could get
away with building a long articulated well car (which would make up the entire length of a practically sized
lego train), but the well car has proven to have more restrictions and less reliability than I would have liked,
and as such it was time to build some regular freight cars.

Tank Car

All of these freight cars were actually designed in maybe 2014, but at the time I did not actually intend to build
them, preferring the aforementioned well car instead. This tank car was completed first because I was able to
acquire almost all of the parts through my local LUG. The only expensive parts were the 8x8 dishes on the ends,
which are apparently quite rare.

As much as I hate to be imprecise, the car is a little bit of a freelance: I did work off a drawing to get the
proportions, but I apparently could not find a photo or model of the thing in the drawing, so the greeble around
the the dome and platform is a bit of a guess. The ladders are also a bit disproportioned, but that is more of a
convenience.

This car probably has the most interesting construction of the three here: I wanted to use the various 8-wide
circle parts, but I did not want them to make up the load-bearing structure (so you can't pull the car apart).
Therefore the load-bearing structure is actually a Technic frame that kind of moves up and down such that the top
and bottom set of circle parts can connect at alternating bulkheads. 

Flat Car

Like the tank car this is a little bit of a freelance, but I really wanted a flatcar such that I could put random
stuff on it, and modern flatcars at our scale are far too long to run on R40. I found two models for reference,
and I believe my drawing is for the bottom one, but the car itself really takes more from the top one. 

This one was actually the toughest one to build. As I designed it in 2014, there wasn't nearly enough structural
integrity and the wheels would easily rub on various other parts in curves. It took me quite a few iterations to
increase the structural integrity to an acceptable level without compromising the overall appearance of the car
(mainly not making it too tall). As you can see the details of the final design look nothing like the details on
my original LDD build.

Build-wise, the key to making it structurally sound was to make the studs-out sides the load-bearing element, and
the difficulty was doing that while still giving the trucks enough clearance to pivot fully in an R40 curve. If
you press on the car in a turn there is still a but of scrubbing, but for now I consider that acceptable.

Hopper Car

Unlike the other two, this car is actually based solely on a specific model! It is the latest one to be
completed, and I think it is actually my favorite of the lot. It took me a while to get around to it one because I
thought it would need a lot of parts, but it was mainly just the 1x2 rails (something like 100 of them) and they
were relatively cheap.

Construction is mainly studs up for the chassis and studs forward/backward for the sides. Each side is a studs
forward and a studs backward section held together with rails on the top and bottom with some additional SNOT
needed to go around the ends. It's probably the sturdiest of the three cars, but also the heaviest. 

Well that's it for now. There is a full gallery with a few more pics if it ever gets moderated. I do have a new
locomotive in the works too, and it will be interesting.

[supertruper1988]

These look great! I love that well car!

It looks like you are modeling about 1:48 and I really like it!

Any chance you could do a breakdown of that great truck design?

[legoman666]

Love them all. I'm totally going to steal some of the details for my own tankers and gondolas. How many of each did you make?

[Commander Wolf]

3 hours ago, cameronmiller1988 said:

These look great! I love that well car!

It looks like you are modeling about 1:48 and I really like it!

Any chance you could do a breakdown of that great truck design?

These are indeed 1:48, 15" per stud. I may someday do a full writeup on the well car if I can make it more usable.

The trucks are the same on the tank car and the gondola, though the pivot points are slightly different; I think this is a pretty good representation of any modern American bogie, albeit a little wider than I'd like:

Spoiler

The truck on the flat car is a bit different, partly because it has to represent a slightly older truck design, mainly because it needs to clear the side panels:

Spoiler

All the wheels are BBB wheels such that the side frames can be as narrow as possible (the net effect is more than just the difference in wheel thickness because you generally have to use 6L axles with official wheels).

2 hours ago, legoman666 said:

Love them all. I'm totally going to steal some of the details for my own tankers and gondolas. How many of each did you make?

I haven't built multiples of any yet, I started gathering parts for a second tank car, but I want to build a few more unique models, see which ones I like most, and then duplicate those. So more to come soon on that front!

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

The flat car looks fantastic ...but all of them are gorgeous!

Great work Commander!

[TomOOO]

They are all really nice, put my efforts to shame.

[CrispyBassist]

I like how the New Haven car was the inspiration for the flat car - good choice! 

Technically the hopper is a bathtub gondola - hoppers have doors on the bottom to unload whereas these have to be turned upside down. But that's just semantics, and doesn't change the fact that it's a really good looking car! I like the levers as the grab irons. I see a lot of these at our research site in western Nebraska.

Any particular reason you chose to use Technic axles for the trucks? I know the resistance on those is pretty high.

[Commander Wolf]

13 hours ago, CrispyBassist said:

Technically the hopper is a bathtub gondola - hoppers have doors on the bottom to unload whereas these have to be turned upside down. But that's just semantics, and doesn't change the fact that it's a really good looking car! I like the levers as the grab irons. I see a lot of these at our research site in western Nebraska.

I was going to contest you on that, but I think you are right. Somehow I thought that these had bottom doors, but looking again, that doesn't seem to be the case. Good catch!

 

13 hours ago, CrispyBassist said:

Any particular reason you chose to use Technic axles for the trucks? I know the resistance on those is pretty high.

From a functional perspective I would definitely prefer to use the stock wheelsets, but they are so egregiously hard to build around if you want an American truck aesthetic that you basically have to use the Technic stuff. You can mitigate the friction a little with lubrication, but even then you are limited to trains of maybe 4 to 5 cars if you are running on 9v power (which our LUG does). It's on my to do list to see if I can make a reliable truck with popped out wheelsets, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Edited November 25, 2016 by Commander Wolf

[supertruper1988]

If you are ok with using non lego for a small part of it, some folks here have had great luck using some small ball bearings in technic bricks and lift arms. 

You can seem more here:

 

[Commander Wolf]

This is the sort of thing I've been messing with, and I'm going to be testing at least one car with this config at the BayLUG Christmas show:

I like this metal-axle-in-railing thing because it's both purist and reversible. I used this technique in my PRR P54s, and they seem to have held up well, but on the freight cars (or at least the tank car, which I am testing) there seems to be a lot of friction from the wheels (not the axles) rubbing against the rails. I need to find more of the newer wheel-axle assemblies so I can insert washers between the wheels and the rails and see if it makes a difference

The other downside is that the bearing things aren't quite aligned with the centers of the axles, but you can almost not tell:

[Commander Wolf]

... and a bonus video with the freight cars in action testing the layout at our annual Christmas show. Come visit the display if you live in the SF Bay Area!

 

[Elysiumfountain]

Wow! Super intricate! I think the picture that was the coolest was the interior of the tanker cars, I would have never guessed so many pieces fit inside in that configuration to hold it together. And they look very realistic.