Building Brass Quarry Line cars

[Bernd]

Sine the quarry line is HOn30 I'm going to write up the building of the brass quarry cars in this section. This project started a little over a year ago after I did a basement redo moving things around to start on the quarry layout part.

I had purchased two MiniTrains set over the years at train shows.




I'm using the plastic cars as a template to make the brass ones. Why brass and not use the plastic one's? They are going to be used dumping real rocks into a crusher building and then the crushed rock will get loaded into the cars and taken to an interchange where they will be dumped into standard gauge hopper cars. That's why brass is being used. The plastic cars do not shove well when empty.

So once I came up with some idea of how I wanted to go about building these I began getting parts together. I'll be using the wheels and axles from the Mini-Trains cars. They will roll in roller bearing axles instead of friction bearings for easier rolling stock.



Tiny bearings from E-bay. They have an id of .039" and fit the Mini-Trains axel.

Here's a close up of the plastic cars and one set of bearing fitted to an axle.



Six cars will be loaded simultaneously under the rock bin. The rock bin will be animated for loading the quarry cars.





Taking a closer look at the plastic cars shows some detail bracing and of course rivets.



I looked into making rivets in aluminum shim (very thin aluminum - approx. 005" thick).











The jury is still out as to whether I'll install rivets on the cars. I may say they are welded steel instead of riveted cars.

That's it for now. More to come.

Bernd

[Pennman]

Bernd,

This project has come a long way for the beginning, and I know its been well thought out before you proceeded.
I also know its a project that I will never do as it requires much needed mechanic methods. But its fun to sit
back and watch you perform your magic. Thanks for sharing. I will be following along with your progress.

Rich

[Bernd]

Bernd,

This project has come a long way for the beginning, and I know its been well thought out before you proceeded.
I also know its a project that I will never do as it requires much needed mechanic methods. But its fun to sit
back and watch you perform your magic. Thanks for sharing. I will be following along with your progress.

Rich

That's one thing I love about this hobby. It lets me design rolling stock that would be plausible if they were  built to 1:1 scale.

Bernd

[Jerry]

Outstanding work Bernd.

Jerry

[elwoodblues]

Bernd,

I would seriously think about using the rivets you made, they are consistent and look look fantastic.

[deemery]

Why aluminum rather than brass for those rivet strips?

dave

[Bernd]

@ Jerry.

Thanks Jerry.

@ Ron,

Still thinking about it. I've got some time before I have to make a final decision on that detail.

@ Dave,

It's all I had with a thickness, which I can't remember what it was, to test out if I could use my Robo router/engraver set up as a rivet machine. That's a whole nother story in it's self.

Bernd