Re: A Climax question...

Being very closely associated with the rebuilding of the 70-ton class C Climax at Cass by the Mountain State Railroad and Logging Historical Association, I can tell you it would be very tough to replicate a New Climax frame one hundred percent. The frame members, as stated above, are indeed 8-inch channels riveted back-to-back, but they are of an obsolete cross section having a web that is 5/8 inch thick. The heaviest channel made today, excluding car and ship channel, has a web thickness of only 0.487 inch, slightly under 1/2 inch.
The photo, posted higher up in this thread, was taken by Steve Neiderriter, a MSRLHA regular, and shows the tender beams that we fabricated to replace those buckled in the late 1930's in a rear end smashup. To keep the same overall frame web thickness of the original beam we used two pieces of the 0.487 inch web channel, and formed a sandwich, with 1/4 X 8 inch flat bar as filler, full length. To prevent water infultration, a stringer beads of 5P was run entirely around the perimeter of the seams, and then ground flush for cosmetic purposes..
Hot riveting the end brackets to the frame was, for beginners like us, tricky. The metal thickness at this piont is 5 1/4 inch, and a LOT of rivet needs to protrude in order to produce a full head. 3/4 inch by 8 inch long rivets were used, and just a fraction of an inch was trimmed off. At first we found it somewhat tough to keep these long rivets from buckling off to one side.
For more on the Climax CN1551 rebuild project, pull up MSRLHA.org, and click on Climax Project.