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Subject: 
Re: 8-wides coming around soon
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.trains
Date: 
Wed, 6 Jun 2001 22:18:27 GMT
Viewed: 
580 times
  
<snip>
Yeah, those long cars are going to be a problem. I want to build an
autorack,[1] and like you said, they are 89'. By my scale that would be 71 studs
(gulp).I'll have to scale that down a bit (understatement).
I think you can go longer than 54 studs for you SD90MAC. My SD40-2 is 59
studs, and since the pivot points are actually only 28 studs apart it has no
problems negotiating curves. I know, a 59 stud engine on trucks centered 28
studs apart seems wrong, but the pivot points on my 6 wheel trucks are way off
center and it works out OK.

http://cmasi.chem.tulane.edu/~lego/NOLTC/tech/pivoting_truck/steerable_wheelset.htm

In my experience, when I hit 40 studs between pivot points I start running
into clearance issues (difficulties clearing the yellow switches on the switch
tracks). So, that sets the distance between the pivot points. But when a
pivoting truck is used to simulate an SD truck you gain some extra length on the
engine. I am guessing that my maximum working SD engine length would be about 75
studs. I am not saying that it won't look silly, or even that it will work. I am
just saying that if I combined the dimensions from my longest simple truck model
with my pivoting trucks that it looks like 75 studs is an upper limit.

So, I guess my suggestion is to make your SD90MAC as long as you can, and
choose a length for your 50' rolling stock (that seems like as good a length as
any to peg as the "most common" short car) and then compress all other cars
relative to those two points. If you want a bit more room to play with, make the
short cars a tad shorted than your original plan. In any event, a 75 foot car
would be about half way between your SD90MAC and your 50 ft box car. A 90 foot
car would be 80% of the way between the two cars. I guess this is the way I do
it, but I never really thought about it.

By the way, my two double stack container cars are 44 studs long[2] (not
counting the trucks because the trucks extend past the end of the container
cars), and they don't look bad behind my 59 stud long SD40-2. (IMO) when I built
the container cars I had no idea how long they were supposed to be (still don't
know). I just built them around my containers, and included a little extra porch
area, because that is what I thought they looked like (I sat and watched a bunch
of them go by while waiting to get into day care the other day/month).

Anyway, good luck with the SD90MAC. I am looking forward to seeing what that
monster is going to look like.

Chris

Yeah I'll be starting soon, I like that 70 stud Idea, and the container cars
are close to the length of a SD40-2.  The well is 48' on most mordern well
cars (In the USA).  I figure 12-14 studs for a 20' container.
Josh



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: 8-wides coming around soon
 
(...) <snip> (...) My 20 footers are 16 studs, so 12-14 would be good...of course I would lean towards the 14 side ;) I made my wells just big enough to fit my 40' (32 stud) containers so I cheated and made my cars a bit shorter than they should be. (...) (23 years ago, 6-Jun-01, to lugnet.trains)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: 8-wides coming around soon
 
(...) snip all my previous comments (...) Yeah, those long cars are going to be a problem. I want to build an autorack,[1] and like you said, they are 89'. By my scale that would be 71 studs (gulp).I'll have to scale that down a bit (...) (23 years ago, 6-Jun-01, to lugnet.trains)

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