Re: Silverton Northern Caboose

Fritz Klinke Wrote:
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>The 49 at Golden has a heavily modified
> underframe that may date to a 1931 shopping--and
> there's a surviving stencil on one of the
> underframe members. The under frame center sills
> are wider apart and and all four main sills extend
> to the end sills than what is shown on the
> blueprints and what is on our car, so perhaps when
> they changed over from link & pin to knuckle
> couplers that the center sill was rebuilt to
> handle the larger couplers. What we are working on
> is extremely close to the blueprints so we will
> end up with an earlier version of the car. The 49
> as it sits today is an interesting mix of the very
> old to more contemporary use of materials and
> technique of the 1930s and later.
>
> Fritz

Fritz,

If you look at early pix of DRG 4-wheel cabeese, you will find a good number of both narrow and wide end platform examples. It's my belief that both types were built new. It is certainly possible that the underframe was modified at some time, but not a certainty. Yours is older by a few months - 17 as compared to 49.

Paul