Garden Railway Forum

I'm in the final stages of completing three Swift Sixteen hopper wagons and want to mark them with a tare and load weight that at least makes sense for these wagons.
My own guesstimates are tare 1 ton (these are quite large and chunky when compared with other 1:19 ish hopper wagons)  load 3 ton. Am I far off, or have I lost the plot?

Regards

That's an interesting question Andy. A quick reckon up suggests a carrying capacity of around 120 cubic feet, that converts to about 3.25 cubic metres. The weight of the payload will depend upon the properties of the material being carried of course, and in any case, this was not the question you asked. It does give a feel for the overall size of the wagon and the robustness of the materials from which the prototype would need to be built though. This in turn give a feel for the weight of the empty wagon.

I guess it's possible to work all this out to come up with a tare weight but it's only three days to Christmas and I have a turkey to buy! My gut feeling is that a wagon like this, potentially built for heavy mineral traffic, would weigh in at around the 1.5 ton mark, possibly even up to 1.75 tons.

On the other hand, if the commodity to be carried was a light material then the timber framing and boards and probably the wheelset dimensions too, could be lighter in section and the tare weight may come down to around the 1 to 1.25 ton mark.

There's no such thing as a simple answer is there?

I think the original Snailbeach Hoppers, which the Swift Sixteen variety resemble were about 1.5 tons tare; 4 tons load. However, that is an old memory and I have not been able to google anything to corroborate the aging grey cells.

Peter in AZ