Subject:
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Technical question on passenger car parts. (steps)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.trains
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Date:
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Thu, 8 Nov 2001 01:22:30 GMT
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Viewed:
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935 times
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Has anyone here ever built a working "drop" step as used on 1930s-'50s
streamlined passenger cars? I'm trying to design a minifig-scale LEGO
'30s-era streamlined car and the vestibule (section where passengers would
board and unload from the car at a station- this looks like a split door
when viewed in a side view, with sections being top/bottom, not left/right.
Technical background: most "streamlined" passenger cars (the proper term is
"lightweight", as some of the old "heavyweight" cars were streamlined and
redubbed "Betterments") and a few "Betterments" were fitted with retacting
steps which passengers used to board. There was a trapdoor in the floor, and
the drop step was fitted below the trap- which opened up. The pivot point
was close to the car's center. Does this sound even in the slightest like
anything anybody's done before?
A note on scaling: based on a few assumptions and measurements I made, I
calculated minifig-scale as about 1:40- a little larger than O scale (1:48,
Lionel) model trains, which makes each stud a 1 foot x 1 foot square.
Working from original drawings of the car I'm modeling, this leaves about 1"
of clearance between the frame bottom and the railhead. In short, vertical
space is at a premium.
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