[PRR-talk] Passenger car trucks

[Bruce Smith]

On Jan 30, 2008, at 1:16 PM, ndbprr at att.net wrote:

> I was looking through the 1953 Car Builders Cyclopedia and noticed  
> the huge variety of passenger car trucks with many roads including  
> the PRR having their own designs.  Why did roads have their own  
> design requirements?  Why weren't passenger car trucks standardized  
> like freight car trucks?

Because freight car trucks weren't "standardized" either!  The PRR  
had its own designs as well as using many other commercial designs  
for freight car trucks.  In either case, truck design had to consider  
a number of variables including the weight of the car, its intended  
purpose, the "ride" needed, bolster location etc.  In the case of the  
PRR, the PRR designed and built many of its cars, especially in the  
early 20th century, and therefore the PRR probably felt that their  
truck designs were better suited for their needs than many other  
sources.  There are a wide variety of different trucks on PRR freight  
cars and although many modelers fail to appropriate model these, many  
more model trucks have become available in the past few years.  Post  
WWII, you see more standardization in both passenger and freight car  
trucks on new PRR cars, and more reliance on 3rd parties to design  
and build the trucks.

Regards
Bruce

Bruce F. Smith
Auburn, AL
http://www.vetmed.auburn.edu/index.pl/bruce_f._smith2

"Some days you are the bug, some days you are the windshield."
                            __
                           /  \
   __<+--+>________________\__/___   ________________________________
  |- ______/ O        O \_______ -| | __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __ |
  | / 4999  PENNSYLVANIA   4999 \ | ||__||__||__||__||__||__||__||__||
  |/_____________________________\|_|________________________________|
  | O--O     \0  0  0  0/    O--O |   0-0-0                    0-0-0


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://dsop.com/pipermail/prr-talk/attachments/20080130/8873ccc3/attachment.html