Dynamometer Car #29 Santa Fe CRAFTSMAN/Tom Teeple, photographs by the author
Scratch Shell I used drawings, photo- graphs, and a few com- mercially available win- dows to create the car. Styrene was the building material of choice.
The Dynamometer is a
unique example of geometry and telemetry cars used by railroads around the world to measure and hopefully improve the effi- ciency of their property. Many of the major carriers had some ver- sion of this relatively high-tech scientific measuring device, and smaller roads are known to have bor- rowed their bigger neighbors’
equip-
ment from time to time.
Rare as they
were, several exam- ples of this car type have been commer- cially produced over the years. Walthe- rs came out with a ready-to-run model some years ago that included a “work- ing” dynamometer, which the company
74 RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
claimed to measure drawbar pull. Hallmark Models even produced a replica of Santa Fe No. 29 in brass in the 1960s, which is available occasionally on Internet auction sites. All this was new to me when I happened upon a photo of a car that at first glance looked like some kind of elegant drover’s caboose. It had roofwalks and handrails going hither, thither, and yon. The car had vents all over the roof like a prairie dog town, a plow-shaped monitor- type cupola, and two large bug- eyed spotlights. Windows, end doors, hand grabs, ladders, hoses, and electrical connec- tions were all visible in this one picture. The bug to build a model of
this car bit me, but I proceeded slowly. I began with a little Inter- net research and asked around among the Santa Fe community for data. Bob Walz, who has pub-
lished many books on the Santa Fe, encouraged me. He volun- teered a set of drawings from his collection that proved invaluable in building my model. I scratchbuilt Santa Fe No. 29
over a period of about a month, primarily using Evergreen styrene sheet, strips, and shapes, as well as details from manufacturers noted in the materials list.
On Going Gently Forth The first challenge I encoun-
tered involved the car’s corners. Unlike a boxcar, which comes to a nice sharp edge, this car has molding like a passenger car on the corners. For this feature, I had to improvise an internal bracing (merely angle stock) that would allow me to bring the sides and ends together at the inside corners with a space allowed for the quar- ter round molding. I chose to use 0.040-inch styrene siding for its strength. When the inside corners
ATSF DYNAMOMETER CAR
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