Equipment Roster - Koppel Skips, Flats, etc.

Koppel Frames, Skips  & Flats

The Aurthur Koppel Co. was a major manufacture of industrial railroad equipment.  The three advertisements show above come from 1901 and 1902 Cassier's Magazines and are typical of the time.  I have wanted to make some  Koppel cars for a long time but the channels in the frames have always intimidated me.  I finally broke down and discovered they aren't nearly as hard to make as you would think.  First, square brass tubing was split in two to form channel beams.  To bend the channel a simple die was fabricated from a brass bar and a brass plate with half a hole machined into the edge.  Before bending I annealed the brass channel to keep it from tearing.  After forming, the two halves of the channel were silver soldered together and fine tuned.  For wheels I used Sierra Valley's 14" wheel sets and Talisman Koppel journal castings.  Both are available from Gary at Sierra Valley.  Now that I have making the frames down,  I plan on constructing a few tippers and flats.