French toy Rugga wagon

Ron Wallman · French toy Rugga wagon

Here is a photograph of my tipper wagon. It is based on hasty measurements made at Minfford on the Festiniog railway. These are Hudson Rugga type and I was told these were ex admiralty stock.
The aim was to make a working toy using available standard sections, fastenings and bearings. The frame ends are semi-elliptical and the skip supports are a small pressing. Purists will note that only two screws are used to assemble sole bar to fender where as four or six are normally used. This is to resist kids and allow the screws to seat properly in the channel. An array of four would mean a small screw such as M3 or smaller to accommodate the hexagon heads. I judged this by far too weak for my kids.
The attraction was the fabricated skip that I was able to imitate. I erred in that I made the skip angle 90° to use sheet material more effectively and to make easy tooling for cutting the lip angle iron. Later I found 90° skips in Belgium. Normally the angle is about 80°.
I made eight as sheet metal I got from the scrap yard allowed this number. Each skip uses about two hundred 5/32 snap head iron rivets.
The second error was to fit a spring instead of a rubber pad in the suspension. These wagons glide instead of rumbling and clanking. At 8 kph the train makes about the same amount of noise as an un-sprung G scale train.
These wagons weigh 12 kg each. They are 497 mm long approximately 320 mm high and 350 mm wide. They will tip without falling over and discharge clear of the wheels. There are automatic latches that secure for transport and they release to discharge away from the release point. The coupling links are standard chain links but they need to be tipped sideways to clear the tee head. The result of this strange disengage angle is that the train has never separated in transit. A centre buffer ensures that wagons do not try to get past each other by crabbing. Crabbing when propelled could lead to derailment and this small modification stops this problem.

James

Very nice trucks Ron-they look like the PnP tippers on sale here in England. PnP's railway tippers

Like you say it is nice if the rattle a bit as they go along-but at least with springs they won't derail!!

SillyBilly

They are truly beautifel little trucks.