QUAX Rolling Stock Carrier

[Raeder]

Here is a link to some pictures I took of a QUAX rolling stock carrier I am building for a fellow club member. It isn't complete yet, but I have to find out what car he wants mounted on the carrier before I can mount the fixed and mobile bolsters. Plus a few small parts here and there.

s632.photobucket.com/albums/uu41/Raeder/QUAX%20Rolling%20Stock%20Carrier/

Kevin

[gnsteve]

That's the first one I've seen modeled and it looks pretty good.

[Raeder]

Thanks, Steve.

I've never seen one either, in real life or in modeling. A BNSF railroader ran across it and wanted one, so here it is. Sad thing is, now that I see the way it looks with that tank car on there, I want one for myself! Now that I know what to do with that tank car, anyways!

Kevin

[Freightrain]

I've seen several of these in real life, I took a couple of pics of one passing through my town, and I plan to also model these.

[kcs1967]

Looks like a great project, any info on materials, or what you used for finding the dimensions?

[Raeder]

My friend knew what the general dimensions were, so I built the car to his request. I have some pics he took of one here in town, and used them to build the car from the railhead up to the deck. He'll take car of the sliding and fixed bolsters, and the "car"go riding on top of it. I, unfortunately, didn't think to take pics of it before I turned it over to him, but he was pretty happy with it, and he is a scale modeler as well, so he looks close at things and thought it would do just what he wanted.

As far as materials goes, he mentioned the car had a 6" I-beam frame, so we found some Plastruct beam that was the right size, and used .010" styrene sheet for the deck. After that, I used some .060" plastic for the center sill, and that stiffened things up enough that we would be able to put a load on it. Most of the frame and suck is strip plastic, while the trucks are off of an Athearn Impack car, since they were the only ones I could find with the proper spring arrangement. Exactrail also has some trucks that have the correct spring arrangement, but they wouldn't answer my emails about ordering and the question I had, so the Athearn's were what we used.
I also used a load of brass wire and some leftover brake system parts to model the brake system under the car. On our club railroad, the tallest point is better than 6' off the floor, so car underframes are very visible. All that nice brake system handiwork will be visible!

Kevin