Saturday, December 21, 2013

For Jim Clubb #2

5 comments:

Chic Silber said...


Was (or is) there a common wheel

tread spacing for wagons similar

to rail track that are standard

in the US & many other countries

at 4'-8½" which came from the UK

Chic Silber said...


Looks like a fairly new tension

top for CW off to the left

4pawfan said...

Hello Chic, Some, but not all railroad shows tried to get their wagons close to the same track measurement to easy unloading.
If you look at a Ringling unloading photo during the wooden wheel era, they use narrow jacks under each of their runs, which means they couldn't adjust them if they had a narrow wagon with a narrower track. The American Circus Corp. used wide jacks that went under both runs in which they could slide one of the runs over to make it narrower for a wagon to load or unload. I sent Buckles a Kelty photo years ago of a unloading shot of Hagenbeck-Wallace and you can see one of the train crew working a long bar on one of the runs moving it over. These are often called coal chutes. p.j.

Chic Silber said...


Thanks PJ certainly makes sense

Most of the Ringling wagons in my

time had pretty close to the same

track but a few like the rubber

wagon with extra wheels made it

a little more difficult to handle

Dick Flint said...

I think you can see some of the dish effect that I described in the previous photo's comments in the top photo. Look at the large wheel and see how the wheel rim is further out than the portion of the wheel attached to the hub. Imagine the wheel going over a bump and how the lower group of spokes on the opposite wheel become perpendicular to the ground to better handle the shift of the weight.
Dick Flint
Baltimore