Elvas Tower: NP 30-ton Flatcars with Knuckle Couplers - Elvas Tower

MSTS/ORTS NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD 1900's 30-Ton 36-Ft.FLATCARS
EQUIPPED WITH KNUCKLE M.C.B. COUPLERS
**HIGH DETAIL WITH MEDIUM POLYGON COUNTS and LODs**
MODEL MESH BY TIM MUIR
TEXTURES BY TIM MUIR, WAYNE CAMPBELL (WHEEL FACES) AND CGTEXTURES.COM (weathering source materials).

Prototype's General Background.

I could not locate any NP plans, nor any decent photos of NP 1890's flatcars so used the best plan I could find, that of a Southern Pacific class CS-8 of 1894. So this is an SP car with NP Peninsular trucks.

This set includes four NP 30-ton, 36-foot flat cars and one Chicago, Milwaukee & St.Paul 30-ton, 36-foot drop-bottom gondola (with new archbar truck models), all with knuckle couplers. There are also copies of two of the flats with stakes, but empty for those with the experience to add their own loads requiring stakes.

Model Background and Data:

The models were built using Train Sim Modeler Pro by Abacus. They are highly detailed with around 7900-8200 polygons (the 4 NP cars) and 8200 (the drop-bottom gon).I have given the gondolas 4 levels of detail, or LODs. The flats have three.

Installation and utilization:

Install the usual way, unzip to a temporary folder, copy the contents to your Trainset folder, then make up a consist with the editor of your choice. These cars are equipped with knuckle type couplers,by request. They do have the slotted knuckles, as was the custom in the transitional days when there was still a mix of link and pin cars and coupler equipped cars. The slotted knuckles allowed a link to be pinned to it. So, these cars can be coupled with their link and pin cousins, although spacing will be a little tight.

There are empty (_mt) and loaded (_ld) wag files for each car. There are four different lumber loads, coal and gravel for the gondolas. These have their own wag files and can be accessed in the consist editor.

I wish to thank the following folks for thier assistance along the way:

Steve Thompson, as mentioned, for digging deep in his collections and supplying rare photos.

Jim Bebenroth, for testing the cars, and suggestions.

Anthony W. Thompson, author of "Southern Pacific Freight Cars, Volume 3:Automobile Cars and Flat Cars", which contains the drawings used to build the flat car model.