Re: Caboose Brake Wheels

>On Rio Grande narrow gauge Caboose's a brake wheel will set up the brakes on both trucks.

When we had John Carson help us survey 0579 (perhaps before we actually knew it was 0579), in 1996, I asked the same question. (John was a Car Shop man in Grand Junction and worked on the wood cars). John looked at me a bit puzzled, like he hadn't ever been asked that question before, and said, "I think it is because if you are riding inside and realize you want to apply the brakes quickly, you don't want to have to think hard on which is the A or B end." Whether that is the real reason or not, I'll buy it!

You'll note from the plans below that even on a short caboose, it took a lot of effort to reverse the direction of the force from the A end brake wheel. When you look under there it really looks busy to get all the needed levers and cranks in the short distance between the trucks. When we build the same for Sleeper 470, we're going to have to do the same.

Photos below:
1. The "plan" we used to reconstruct the brake system on 0579. This actually came from an article in Model Railroader and is of 0578, which of course is in the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden. Everything had been removed. I spent many hours underneath 0578, measuring the length of the rods and levers, and determining the proper mounting points.
2. I found this photo in an old issue of MR. I believe it is basically very accurate and gives you an idea of the complexity of the rigging.
3. John Carson. Pre-Friends, three retired Rio Grande railroaders contributed to the restoration work, led by Bill Lock. They were John, Harry Babcock, and Hawley Seeley. The session in 1996 was the last year John and Hawley could make it; Harry couldn't. Their experience was invaluable and more than anything else, convinced us that we could take on things we thought were impossible.
4. John and Warren Ringer, looking at the underside of the car in Antonito, an image from a video Howard Bunte produced. Our main concern at the time was repairing the frame that we thought occurred during the last scene of "Denver and Rio Grande". There's a photo post-movie showing the car intact, so the damage happened at some point after being retired.

Bill Kepner











Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 01/21/2018 06:25AM by drgw0579.