# 1/6th scale 2 foot gauge tram car projects



## Amber (Jul 29, 2011)

I don't know if I actually had a thread going for my 1/6th scale car projects, so I started this one.
I have a couple of mine car projects that I've been working on, as the inspiration strikes. The biggest problem that I run into is having to make everything that is used to build the cars, except for the wheels which are 1/13 scale wheels of the largest diameter that I can get. Figuring out how to build the parts takes a lot longer than the actual process of building them.
I would imagine that you've seen this flat car that I built a while back. The flatcar is for hauling mine timbers, railroad ties, and other things for the mine tram.



This is a car that I've been working on and trying to figure out the construction of for a while. This is supposed to be a drop bottom ore car, if I ever get it figured out. The bearing journals are made from brass fittings epoxied into pieces of square tubing. The axles are 5/16ths diameter rod. I was having a hard time figuring out how to attach them to the wood frame, I finally decided to bend up some steel flat stock to make the bracing for the journal boxes. Now I need to figure out what size screws to use to fasten them together with, and then drill the holes for the fasteners.





Hopefully more progress will be made soon on these cars.
I still need to find a way to couple the cars together so that they can be pulled by whatever I come up with for that, probably a battery powered mine tram engine of some design. I have lots of pictures of the electric engines used in the copper mines of the Keweenaw mining district to use for inspiration.
I would like to use some kind of link and pin system, but I haven't figured out how to make them yet, and I don't think that the 1/13 scale castings are big enough, but I could be wrong about that. I should probably buy 1 set of 1/13 scale link and pin couplers to see if they're big enough to get away with using.


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## NTCGRR (Jan 2, 2008)

I see your problem, yes ,,, very clear.. Your drinking Coke..... 
Pepsi!!!!! girl!!!


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## Dr Rivet (Jan 5, 2008)

For your L&P couplers: 

a] a piece of brass rectangular tube for the shank, curve the face with a file, drill a hole through for the pin 
b] make the mating surface [buffing plate] from a piece of brass with a horizontal slot in it for the link 
c] solder the buffing plate to the curved end of the shank 
d] attach to the end beam of your car 

I have about 20 log bunks made this way. It is just a wood frame glued over an old Bachmann Big hauler arch bar freight truck. The coupler is made as described above and just bolted on to the bottom of the end beam. 

Inexpensive and very easy to make


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## Amber (Jul 29, 2011)

Thanks for the suggestion, Jim! I'll have to try that and see how it turns out. 
Marty, it all rots your teeth, but Coke is a better rust remover.


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## Dr Rivet (Jan 5, 2008)

Amber 

The ones I described are not very "cosmetically appealing" if you are trying to make something that looks like the old cast iron pockets, but they are functional and reliable. 

I suppose they could me made more bulky in appearance by using JB Weld, plastic steel, or even epoxy as a filler and then shaping it to look more like a heavy casting. 

I found this in a search... but I think it is probably too big AND too much money [IMHO] ==> http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-1-2-SCALE...NUM-LINK-PIN-COUPLER-LIVE-STEAM-/321264743197 

Good luck


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## SD90WLMT (Feb 16, 2010)

Since your cars are such small and light duty units... it is plausable they could use smaller link n pin ..not absolutely to 1/6 scale.. 

Dirk


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## CliffyJ (Apr 29, 2009)

...Marty, it all rots your teeth, but Coke is a better rust remover.  Wax on, wax off...


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## Amber (Jul 29, 2011)

I broke down and ordered a set of 7/8ths scale link and pin couplers to see how they'll look on the car They might work, the cars are pretty light duty. 
I picked up a length of 1/8th inch rod to use for making the bolts and rods that would normally hold the car together. I was hoping to thread it to 4-40, but it's a bit too big for that. I can thread it to 5-40 without too much trouble, but the 5-40 nuts seem a bit on the large size. Maybe if I thread it to 5-40, I'll be able to re-thread that thread to 4-40. I haven't tried that yet, but I plan to, just to see what happens. I might have some brass rod that can be threaded to 4-40, but I'm going to have to dig through the pile of brass stuff to find out.


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## Amber (Jul 29, 2011)

I decided to make another frame for the car in this project. I just wasn't satisfied with the length of the frame in the pictures. The steel journal brace pieces are longer than the side frames in the picture and I didn't want the steel to overlap onto the endbeams. I want to drill a set of holes on the ends of the journal braces to run vertical tie rods through to represent the ones that would have been used to hold the frames together. It would be interesting to use mortice and tenon joints in the frames like the full size wood frame cars had, but I don't have the patience or the proper tools to make the joints in frames of this size. Holding the frames together with tie rods would be interesting, but not very practical at this size. 
The new frames are 10 inches long and 6-1/2 inches wide, the other frame was 8-3/4 inches long. I'm not even sure why I made the old one that long, that would be 4 feet, four and a half scale inches long. Odd... 
The new ones are 5 scale feet long, makes more sense to me. Now, to drill the mounting holes for the journal boxes and the brace bars in the frame...


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## Ray Dunakin (Jan 6, 2008)

Interesting project!


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## Amber (Jul 29, 2011)

I got the 7/8ths scale link and pin couplers from Ozark Minis yesterday and I think they just might be big enough to work for the these tram cars that I'm making. They scale out to about 4 inches wide by 3 inches tall, a bit on the small side, but they should work well enough until I can come up with something a bit bigger. I don't think that the couplers on the side dump cars at the local museum are much bigger than that.


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## Amber (Jul 29, 2011)

I got a bit more work done on the car frame this weekend. I got the holes drilled in the journal braces and the frame and put them together with threaded rod to see how they fit together. I will eventually replace the threaded rod with 1/8th inch rod with the ends threaded. I'll end up using hex nuts for the 1/8th inch rod, I haven't been able to find square nuts in 5-40 or 4-40 sizes. The rod is fairly easy to thread to 5-40 with a die, I'm thinking about trying to rethread it to 4-40 after the 5-40 threads, I was figuring it would be easier to do that way. The only reason I would go to the 4-40 is that the nuts are a bit smaller and might look better. The 6-32 square nuts on the threaded rod just look too big to me. 
It would be nice to find 4-40 machine screws with a normal hex head on them, and long enough to use, but I haven't found any that are long enough. 
Anyway, here's a couple pictures of the progress. 





This is the 7/8ths scale Ozarks Minis link and pin coupler pocket, I think it's undersized even for this small of a car in 2 inch scale. They're nice coupler pockets, but I don't think they're usable for this. I guess I might have to build a 7/8ths scale car to put them on, at some point.


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## Amber (Jul 29, 2011)

I had run out of the 1/2 inch by 1/8th inch metal to make the journal braces for the other car frame that I have waiting, so I picked up another piece of it at the hardware store yesterday. Now I'll be able to make the braces for the other car. It would be interesting to extend the braces all the way to the edge the end beams and up the face of the end beam with a 90 degree angle, but I'm not sure I could bend them accurately enough. I'm just using a bench vise to bend them now and the bends are not all that precise. The bends good enough for this use, but probably not precise enough to fit properly to the end beams. 
I still need to figure out how to make link and pin couplers, but I have a couple of new ideas to try, so I'll see how they work out.


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## JPCaputo (Jul 26, 2009)

For screws of all sizes and head shapes, check out fastenal, and McMaster Carr. I have seen square nuts and hex head screws at both places.


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## JPCaputo (Jul 26, 2009)

For rethreading to 4-40 from 5-40, it cannot be done without adding material to the hole. 

4-40 is smaller than 5-40. Start with 4-40 and it can be enlarged to 5-40 (drill to enlarge to proper size for the tap) 

I use this as one of several thread size charts. And there are other charts with proper drill dia to each thread to be cut, or of to turn a screw to to thread as well. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Thread_Standard


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## Amber (Jul 29, 2011)

True, if I was threading a hole, going from 5-40 to 4-40 would be a problem. I'm threading rod stock to make bolts and truss rods, and the 1/8th inch rod that I'm using is too big to thread directly to 4-40 with the hand tools that I'm using, but I can thread it to 5-40 without too much trouble. If I can re-thread the 5-40 threads on the rod down to 4-40, then I can use the smaller nuts on the rods. 

There's a local Fastenall location that I've gotten stuff from on occasion. I picked up the 5-40 and 4-40 nuts there last week, the hardware stores around here don't carry those sizes. I didn't think to check there to see what they had in 4-40 screws.


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## JPCaputo (Jul 26, 2009)

I misread the the previous post regarding threading, I'm sorry bout that.

For what I can see, fastenal carries down to 0-80 screws and nuts. If they don't have in store they can have it shipped in free.

I've picked up a lot of 2-56 stuff from them, no one else in vegas has stuff below 4-40. I found a place that sells 00, 000, and smaller screws of all types. I need to find that info again, it was a place in japan I think.


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## Amber (Jul 29, 2011)

I have some brass 00-90 screws from one of the hobby suppliers, I don't know how you would even make something smaller than those tiny screws. I have a hard time handling them without tweezers.  
I was using the 00-90s for details on one of my G scale projects a while back, just tiny things to work with... 
The local Fastenal carries a selection of steel rod and flat stock also, about the same as what the local hardware store has, but they probably could get stuff that the hardware store doesn't carry. The next time I go there, I'll have to check out their stock of really small fasteners, just to see what they have. 
At one time, you could get small machine screws and nuts from Radio Shack but I don't know if they still carry that stuff. The local Radio Shack closed up a couple months ago, so I can't go there for stuff anymore.


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## Amber (Jul 29, 2011)

I need to find a better way to bend steel flat stock for my projects. Using a vice and a hammer does not always work out well. I have a hard time getting bends that are 90 degrees to the flat stock, so the part doesn't line up quite right. I'm also limited on how short of a distance I can have between bends. I'd like to get one of those metal benders that uses a hydraulic jack to make the bends. But then, it's not like I'm going to make a bunch of these cars, just a couple. 
I tried another idea for link and pin couplers last night, based on some of the industrial link and pin couplers that I've seen pictures of. They were a pain in the butt to bend from the 1/8th by 3/4s flat stock, mostly due to the bends being so close together, and they look too big to me. Oh well, I'll get it figured out.


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## CliffyJ (Apr 29, 2009)

Cool pic with the Santa figure, amber. When you called it your "G.I. Joe railroad" somewhere, I wasn't quite sure what you meant, but now I get it. 

Are you making a display / diorama? Or will you make powered units as well? 

Fascinating stuff, 
Cliff


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## Amber (Jul 29, 2011)

Well, the plan is to make a battery powered mine tram engine along the lines of the real battery powered mine tram engines. I'll put radio control in it if I can get it built. My biggest problem with building models this big is finding the wheels. For the tram engine, I should have at least 2 inch diameter wheels, and 3 inch would be better. I'm not sure who would have 3 inch or so diameter wheels available. I can find 4-1/8th and 4-1/4 inch wheels, but those are too big for the purpose and the wheel tread is probably too wide for my use also. Perhaps the 1 inch scale wheels would work, but the ones that I've found are wheel sets with the wrong gauge. 
One of these days, I'd like to make a compressed air engine like the ones used in some of the mines, but that's a project for the future. 
I think it would be interesting to build a couple of Gilpin Tram ore cars in this scale, but I'd need to find the parts to make the trucks. If I made them for 4-3/4s gauge, it would probably be easier to get the parts for the trucks, I could just use the available wheelsets and journal boxes for the archbar trucks.


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## CliffyJ (Apr 29, 2009)

Yeah, those are pretty big wheels. The only thing I can think of, in my limited G-gauge orientation, would be getting some replacement drivers for Bachmann's "Emily," and maybe epoxy-filling between spokes. Not sure how big they are though.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Bachmann-G-...272632?pt=Model_RR_Trains&hash=item540089a178 

It's be neat to see what you come up with. 
Cliff


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## Amber (Jul 29, 2011)

The wheels that I have on the car that I'm working on are the largest wheels that I've found for 1/13.7 scale, 7/8ths scale. They're about 1-3/4s inches in diameter, about 9 scale inches in 2 inch scale. I pulled the wheels off the axles and removed the insulators from the wheels, then I made axles for them from 5/16ths inch steel rod. I took a wheel to the hardware store to see if I could find something that would work for axle stock, and the 5/16ths rod was a very tight fit, so I went with that. The wheels were designed to run on G scale track, so they work well on code 332 brass rail.


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## Amber (Jul 29, 2011)

I've been trying to figure out how to build the bottom of these cars as a drop door hopper car, but there's no plans to go by so I haven't been making any progress on the cars. I think I might have a workable design that might be something that would have been used to build full sized cars like this. The biggest problem with a drop bottom hopper in a car this small is that the axles are too close together to build a hopper bottom that extends down through the frame, and the upper half of the wheels are up inside the frame. That means that the bottom of the hopper has to sit on the frame instead of in the frame. I think I might have a workable design now, I'll have to build it and see if it, going to work.


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## Totalwrecker (Feb 26, 2009)

Many ore cars were built with a higher bin... This train runs on 20" Baby Ga. track..









I'm pretty sure these are side dump tho'.
I saw this ga yesterday as I was going through Arizona digital archives and thought of you. The mining town of Morenci Az had the baby ga. running through out the town.
See my thread 'Pics that Inspire' for more of this line.
I like what you are doing.

John


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## Totalwrecker (Feb 26, 2009)

To bend steel to a true 90 degrees, you need to go tighter than 90 so it can spring back some. 
If you file half way through you can make the bends easier and where the grooves are. Helps locate them. 
A set of needle files is a good addition to the workbench. 
John


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## Amber (Jul 29, 2011)

With my first car, I was going to make a side dump car, but I could never figure out how to make the hinges to tip the dump body. I was going to make it tip to one side only like a few of the small. side dump cars that I have pictures of. Those were more common in the mines than bottom dump cars. 
I think the cars in the picture that you put up here have 3 lower hinge castings that the body tips on. There are several Fairbanks Morse cars like these up in Michigan's copper country, on top of the hill north of Houghton, MI. The Quincy Mine historical society restored one of them and it's on display at the Quincy Hoist site. Those cars are longer than the ones in the picture and I think they have 4 hinges. 
I'll have to try putting a groove where I want the bend to be, I hadn't thought of that. I've been working with 1/8th inch thick steel so I would think I could cut the groove with a triangle file. 
I've been looking at the "pictures that inspire" thread, lots of good stuff there!


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## Amber (Jul 29, 2011)

I wonder how difficult it would be to build a brass or steel hopper for this car, along the lines of the Eureka Mine Tram cars? I could do it in plastic, but it wouldn't be heavy enough. Finding the proper size angle irons for the scale would be the biggest problem for steel. The hopper sheets were riveted together using angle irons on the inside of the seams.


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## Amber (Jul 29, 2011)

I'm still stuck on these cars, I guess it's time to change the design again. I think the side dump idea is about the only one that will work on a car this small, for the scale.


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