Elvas Tower: D&RGW 40" flat car 6314 - Elvas Tower

This series of flat cars was built by the D&RGW at Alamosa in 1926. Only fifteen cars were built and only two remain today. These were the last D&RGW cars built new as flat cars.

These cars were unique, besides their 40 length, in that they had 4' 8" arch bar trucks with truck mounted "inside brakes". Most D&RGW freight cars had 3' 7" trucks with brake shoes suspended from the car frame. They also had 40 Lb "reinforcing rail" placed under the side sills in 1937.

Of the only two remaining cars, one is in poor condition at Georgetown, CO and the other was recently rebuilt by "The Friends of the Cumbres and Toltec" at Chama NM. I was fortunate enough to have spent two weeks on this rebuild project.

This model had it's initial testing, physics adjustments and general tweaking by Howard Saunders, and final testing by Herb Kelsey and Tom Werb. It was built from "Official D&RGW "plans from "The Maxwell Collection" with additional data from Bill White's "Rio Grande Southern Technical Page" web site, and from personal measurements and observations.

I hope you enjoy this unique NG freight car, Bill

Original File Name = R_Flat_6314_Upload.zip

Updated 05-19-2009