OK, so I did not know this exist
So I saw it in BigEd's collection and when he ran it at the last Train show lots of guys asked about it, so I decided to do some research and post something here. Maybe more of us can learn something
To find them is quite a mission and they are extremely expensive for their size if you compare it to normal rolling stock. That's just my opinion.
On ebay there is a few $25.00 excluding shipping another one is $11.65 excluding shipping. Shipping is listed at about $25 so you end up paying anything from R400 to R600 just to get it here and then duties is going to charge you another 14% plus minus.
Here is the deffinition...
A scale test car is a type of railroad car in maintenance of way service. Its purpose is to calibrate the weighing scales used to weigh loaded railroad cars. Scale test cars are of a precisely known weight so that the track scale can be calibrated against them.
Cars are weighed for various purposes. These include:
- Axle load limits - Cars are weighed to ensure they are within the axle load limits of the railroad
- Customer billing - Cars are weighed to determine (by subtracting the car's unloaded, or tare weight from the total weight) the amount of cargo loaded. This is used to bill the railroad's customers for the carriage of bulk commodities, so it is essential that the track scales be accurate.
Many scale test cars were small, old railroad cars carrying heavy metal weights as their superstructure. Scale test cars needed special handling so they would not suffer damage, which might alter their weight. They were reweighed periodically on accurate scales at the railroad's shops
Here is a few pictures of the real thing as well as the N Scale version.
