Maths help needed

Seems odd (to me) to have sliding doors and roof boards.
 
Rhinochugger said:
Two things go through my mind.

Is that a representation of a converted hopper wagon?
Is it a model of a narrow gauge wagon?

While it's possible that the narrow gauge lines, or possibly one of the short lines would have converted a wagon in that manner, it doesn't appear to have the proportions of a narrow gauge wagon, and that may be the difficulty when comparing it with a Bachmann 1:22.5 wagon.
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I confess that I haven’t thought about the model in gauge terms, or indeed scale. I think the model is possibly 0? I just liked the look of the thing as a potential scratchbuilding challenge. The inward-sloping ends made me raise the possibility of it being, or having been, an early hopper but my intention is to build it as a boxcar, despite the fact that the only common vehicle type I lack is - a hopper. Going back to Tac’s recent offering, I too think the undecorated version has a charm of its own. I meant from the outset to leave my eventual effort as an unpainted, or just weatherworn, vehicle, to represent some sort of non-revenue earner, to accompany the excellent MoW vehicle comprehensively illustrated in another forum here, which I have shamelessly copied, with very minor changes and S&D castings.
The current illustration from the internet has no accompanying text, attribution or indication of its source, other than Pinterest, which mentions another source which in turn has yielded no further info that I have been able to find, or even the illustration itself.

Back to you, gents.
trammayo said:
Seems odd (to me) to have sliding doors and roof boards.
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Quite, especially if it is/was a hopper.
 
Eaglecliff said:
I confess that I haven’t thought about the model in gauge terms, or indeed scale. I think the model is possibly 0? I just liked the look of the thing as a potential scratchbuilding challenge. The inward-sloping ends made me raise the possibility of it being, or having been, an early hopper but my intention is to build it as a boxcar, despite the fact that the only common vehicle type I lack is - a hopper. Going back to Tac’s recent offering, I too think the undecorated version has a charm of its own. I meant from the outset to leave my eventual effort as an unpainted, or just weatherworn, vehicle, to represent some sort of non-revenue earner, to accompany the excellent MoW vehicle comprehensively illustrated in another forum here, which I have shamelessly copied, with very minor changes and S&D castings.
The current illustration from the internet has no accompanying text, attribution or indication of its source, other than Pinterest, which mentions another source which in turn has yielded no further info that I have been able to find, or even the illustration itself.

Back to you, gents.

Quite, especially if it is/was a hopper.
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It might be worth searching for pictures of outside framed boxcars - especially narrow gauge ones.

I think there could be a few examples.

EDIT - after a quick google I haven't found any yet - I'll dive into my books later :nod::nod:
 
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I have a small collection of Arcadia Publishing 'Images of Rail' books, and among them is one volume on Oahu's Narrow-Gauge Navy Rail.

The trouble is that the pictures are most likely copyright but.


The Nay used at Pearl Harbour what is recorded as being between three and six, 20 ton steel framed, wood outside braced box cars made by Seattle Car & Foundry in 1917.

The railway was 3ft narrow gauge, and the box cars have seven 'bays' down each side with the first three bays having one diagonal brace, the centre bay being a sliding door, and the remaining three bays having one diagonal brace. The braces on bays 1 & 2 and 6 & 7 form a 'V', with the braces on bays 3 & 5 being parallel to the half of the V in bays 2 & 6 (yeah, work that out >:) ).

These boxcars were assigned to the naval magazine on Kuahua Island.

They also had some boxcars with what looks like outside steel bracing, and obviously this bracing doesn't protrude in the way that timber bracing does.

At the moment, Google is only giving me images for the steel braced boxcars.
 
tac foley said:
I'm sorry, I didn't know that you were asking US for the length of the car. You HAD told us that you were going to use a Bachmann frame-set, so in that respect it's going to be around 27 scale feet without couplers. To me your image looks like a 3ft gauge car.
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Apologies, Tac. Yes, that was the original intention.
To my untutored eye, the end of the pictured vehicle looks similar in size and proportion to the end of my Bachmann vehicles, be they 1/24 or 1/20.5. If not, I’m floundering. Whichever, the Bachmann chassis is 15” long, = 30’ in 1/24, but no way will 9 bays fit into that dimension if their proportions are to be maintained - we look again at the “X” at each end. So, indeed, I just need to know, how long do we think the prototype vehicle was, if the end of the model is the same as the standard Bachmann end? And I’ll just build a new chassis - good practice for me.
 
Eaglecliff said:
Apologies, Tac. Yes, that was the original intention.
To my untutored eye, the end of the pictured vehicle looks similar in size and proportion to the end of my Bachmann vehicles, be they 1/24 or 1/20.5. If not, I’m floundering. Whichever, the Bachmann chassis is 15” long, = 30’ in 1/24, but no way will 9 bays fit into that dimension if their proportions are to be maintained - we look again at the “X” at each end. So, indeed, I just need to know, how long do we think the prototype vehicle was, if the end of the model is the same as the standard Bachmann end? And I’ll just build a new chassis - good practice for me.
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I'm not sure that prototype vehicle was narrow gauge, so it is likely to be a lot longer than the narrow gauge wagons that we run. And here you have the rub, if you scale down the length to get all the bays in, you'll need to scale down the height.

It might be worth knocking out a bay or two - proportionality is sometimes better than complete accuracy, especially when working with something as flaky as G Scale ;);)
 
Rhinochugger said:
I'm not sure that prototype vehicle was narrow gauge, so it is likely to be a lot longer than the narrow gauge wagons that we run. And here you have the rub, if you scale down the length to get all the bays in, you'll need to scale down the height.

It might be worth knocking out a bay or two - proportionality is sometimes better than complete accuracy, especially when working with something as flaky as G Scale ;);)
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Takes us back to the model - looks really long. It’s got to be 18” in G and I’d like to keep the character of the original. Unfortunately, went to Hobbycraft this morning, almost no basswood, so I can barely build the first side.
Paul M said:
View attachment 261358

Mine Does!
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It all adds up...
 
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