Thoughts… You have a lot of questions... some don't apply across the many cars and years... The term “Class 1” is Sloan’s… not the railroad’s. The Billmeyer & Smalls 4 wheel freight cars are a generation ahead of the cabooses... The earliest cabooses were probably not built by Billmeyer and Smalls, but instead are the Jackson & Sharp built 4 wheel passenger cars reconfigured. If so comparing them to the flat cars Nos 1-90, or the Lumber Car (Billmeyer & Smalls term for the longer flat car) may be leading you down a false path…
Billmeyer & Smalls ads do include a “cut” of a 4 wheel caboose built for one of Palmer’s Mexican lines, and there is ample evidence that B&S was providing castings to the D&RG for D&RG built freight cars… but they are D&RG built… not B&S…
Draw gear height was less important with link and pin draw heads (couplers are an automatic device)… and there was a great variation on drawhead/coupler height… “Crooked links” were common. Baldwin usually included draw bar height on their specification sheets, but sadly not for the first 2-6-0’s… I checked… more research might show when they first specified draw bar height and what that was…
Sloan’s drawings for the 4 wheel flats and box cars are Hartford… I trust Bob’s eye but it is as far as I can tell and interpretation. Note the original order included 10’ cars (12’ with draft gear) with 7’ wheel bases and a single 15’ long “Lumber Car”… 17’ with draft gear with a wheel base of 10’.
The earliest D&RG caboose drawings date to the 1882, and call out 9’ wheel base… the 1904 folio shows 10’, These two numbers probably represent evolution, and therefor are not in conflict…
You can check the patent… Try Google Patents, patent no. 158892. Sloan s3ays the two spring boards were 2x8, add a space for the rubber spring… the true end beam was a 8” tall x7” wide… plus the another rubber spring donut and the washer at the end… The stem is probably about 18” long… Also look for Ron Rudnic’s books on early Colorado freight cars… he has drawn wood spring draft gear
There are pictures on Towle Brothers lumber showing the flat car brake staff bracket…. It is an inverted U with the shaft in the middle, not the half U shown on Bob’s drawings…
You really can’t compare the caboose pedestals with their leaf springs to the possibly ridged pedestals (more likely a rubber or coil spring) used on the 4 wheel freight cars… there is a B&S builders photos of a 30” gauge 4 wheel hopper using wood springs for the journal springs…
When you talk about open frame draw heads, that if for conventional sprung draft gear… the freight cars had a wooden plank spring system…
Randy
Randy Hees
Director, Nevada State Railroad Museum, Boulder City, retired
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