Mickoo - thanks for the picture of the coupler - now to order some Albion Alloys sleeved brass square tube and brass strip to make my own coupler draft boxes.
You'll need a large pair of spiking pliers for those spikes
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My period of modelling will be 1980s which means I can have some of the older cars but I'm interested in pictures of draft gear (normal and cushion) so I can at least attempt to get mine right.
Also I've noticed from the pictures modern cars (other than the double stack and possibly autorack) appear to run on 36'' wheels rather than 33''. Is this the case now or does it only apply to heavier tonnage cars?
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To my understanding, there are four common sizes of modern wheels in use. I would think "modern" in this sense includes the 80's, as most everything we see now was already around by then except for most of the articulated cars. I believe most modern wheel standards were in place by the late 60's to early 70's. Not much has changed since then.
28" wheels I believe are used on Autoracks at a minimum, accounting for clearance concerns rather than load ratings.. There may be some other high clearance cars that require them, but none to my knowledge as ubiquitous as the autoracks.
33" wheels are generally considered for cars with 70 ton load capacities, although I think some of these cars may also use 36" wheels. About the only 70 ton capacity cars I know of now are boxcars, and possibly flat cars. Typically cars whose ladings are large in volume but light in mass. Like car parts or appliances. Or wind turbine blades. Going back to the 80's, 70 ton cars are almost certainly more common. I don't know the dates, but through the years the maximum tonnages have been incrementally increased as cars have gotten larger.
36" wheels are probably the most common today as they are the defacto standard for 100 ton cars. Larger boxcars, most any hopper, covered or otherwise, tank cars, gondolas, and so on.
38" wheels are much less common. They are typically on equipment rated for 125 tons. They might be found on the common truck found between two articulated stack or spine cars, and therefor carry some part of the load from both cars.
Off the top of my head, 70 ton trucks would use the 33" wheels and have a wheelbase of 5'-8", 100 ton trucks would use 36" wheels and have a wheelbase of 5'-10", and 125 ton trucks would use 38" wheels with a wheelbase of 6'-0". Bearing sizes also increase correspondingly.
By the way, if you are shooting for the 80's you might want to replace your friction bearing trucks with ones with roller bearing journals. By that point friction bearings were essentially non-existent except possibly on captive cars not intended for interchange service. Quite possibly, friction bearings may have been outright banned from use on by the FRA or whichever regulatory administration was in place at the time.
Some draft gear images from a TBOX 60' boxcar - pretty modern....often times specs are called out on the ends of cars in the same vein as the spring grouping data previously pictured.
This last photo isn't mine and is of a different but similar car as the photos above - I have no idea on the copyright.
Photos of derailed equipment are some of the most useful things out there. Too hard to come by though.
There is a ton of information out there about cushioning devices and draft gear and coupler assemblies.
Another very handy resource is the
Car and Locomotive Cyclopedia published by Simmons-Boardman. They have been issued periodically over the last 100+ years. I have one from 1997 and one from 1980. They contain all sorts of information ranging from full on complete car and loco data to all the common appliances like brake systems, couplers systems, door, roof, and end components, and so on. Older editions would include the same sort of data for steam locomotives instead of diesels. It is sort of half reference source, half advertising. Best of all, there are lots and lots of technical drawings
! A lot of the data I used to model my 100 ton truck was gleaned from these two books, including wheel profiles, sideframe and bolster dimensions, and brake system components and arrangements. They can be expensive, but the most recent volumes have been on sale for $99 for some time now. I think they used to offer them on CD but I don't currently see that option offered. It might be worth a trip to the local library as the one here had multiple volumes available. I eventually purchased the two latest versions since that was my era of highest interest and they were not among the editions available from the library.
Want to get really specific? Go to this
BNSF page for summaries of their equipment. Pick a railcar type, click on the diagram link, and you will end up with something like this....
Just about every component used on the car, with manufacturer and model designation, is indicated on this page. It's handy to know what to search for on google. Some manufacturer have data that we can use online. Some don't offer specifics. But there is a ton of data available here.
All for now. If you have questions on any of the fields in the summary above, ask away. Don't get lost now
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EDIT: corrected wheelbases for 70 and 100 ton trucks from 6'-8" and 6'-10" to 5'-8" and 5'-10" respectively.
Jim
. Several search results on the web seem to indicate this, and I also pulled a 
but then I'm not doing P48.
either enamel or acrylic. I tried some product by Microscale that was supposed to prevent this.... yeah, right.... 
. Then it was on the fly with a small engineers square and ruler 
style lettering size comes along. At present FOR FRAGILE FREIGHT is too large as the F in FOR should be underneath the Y in HYDRA and the T at the end of FREIGHT should end where H is in FREIGHT.
