Tag Archives: San Juan

New couplers from San Juan Car Company

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Side by side comparison of the new San Juan Type E Couplers and their existing Operating Type E Coupler. Gene Deimling photos

Side by side comparison of the new San Juan Type E Couplers and their existing Operating Type E Coupler. Gene Deimling photos

Gene Deimling posted about the new San Juan Couplers on his blog today. I recommend reading it. Here is an excerpt:

San Juan Car Company has been working on a new automatic coupler based upon the prototype Type-E coupler. Work was started on the standard gauge Evolution coupler shortly after finishing the narrow gauge Evolution automatic coupler. After several tries with their Chinese die maker, the coupler is done and in the country. The coupler is very similar to their working AAR Type-E coupler. The dimensions are nearly identical except for a scale inch and a half shorter in height. The shank has the same mounting hole and spring-plastic centering. It will fit in the same draft gear as the old San Juan coupler.

I can’t wait to try these out!

The new couplers look as good as the operating couplers and they do not have to be assembled. I also like the way they will remove the coupler slack if used in Kadee compatible coupler boxes.

Gene also mentions at the end of his post that there will be one more new assembled operating coupler in the states in the coming months. Coupler choices, that’s something to look forward to.

Vulcan Trucks – Two Different Versions

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Yoder P48 Vulcan truck on left, San Juan P48 Vulcan truck with Protocraft 33″ wheelset on right.

While at the Strasburg show I picked up a pair of the new Yoder Vulcan p48 trucks.  The Yoder website shows the trucks are out of stock in P48, but he had some on the table at the show. The trucks come fully assembled and include a screw so that they could be mounted onto one of Rich’s models.

I had held back before on buying these because I have several pair of San Juan’s Vulcan truck on the shelf and really did not know much about the design. When I got home and set the truck next to a San Juan truck, I was pleased to see that they were different. This started a little digging to find out some more information about the trucks.

I looked at the article “Arch Bars to Roller Bearing, Freight car trucks 1900-1960″ by Richard Hendrickson in Volume 4 of the Railway Prototype Cyclopedia. Where I found out the Vulcan truck was manufactured by American Steel Foundries in the early 1920′s. They were similiar to Andrews trucks of the time, with a cast steel side frame with seperate journal boxes.  Where they differed is that the Vulcan design eliminated the need for a bottom retainer bars by bolting the journal box into pedestal jaws.

The article show photos of two different Vulcan designs one an earlier L-section and one a later U-section side frame castings.

In Robert Karig’s book, Coal Cars the first three hundred years, he speaks of the Vulcan design in chapter six on Freight car trucks. “George G. Floyd was awarded a patent for a side frame with pedestal mounted journal boxes on May 3, 1910. It served as the foundation patent for the American Steel Foundries’ Vulcan side frame. Initially built in a T-Section form, the Vulcan frame was ultimately converted to a channel-section design.”

I was also surprised to see that Rich’s trucks were completly within NMRA spec for P48. Not all of the trucks I have measured before from Rich for Standard O scale were, so this was great news. The San Juan truck does have nice casting letting on the truck sideframes that the Yoder’s are lacking.

Vulcan Truck from 1922 Car Builders Cyclopedia

Vulcan truck with NYC markings on display at the Danbury Railroad Museum, Danbury, CT.