A few times I have posted articles looking at vintage items by unknown makers. 

In helping to sort and evaluate some parts recently this truck type really stood out. I have never seen this before. They seem pretty overscale, and I have to believe are homemade. Someone put some effort into cutting a die and then cast these in something like Linotype. There were three of the trucks with the parts, two with what look to possibly be Nason 3-rail (uninsulated) wheelsets. It is hard to say if they are from the early 1930s or a WWII era project. In either case, they are highly unusual.

One unusual thing is the bolsters are built up from three pieces of brass, soldered together. One of them broke in handling now. Why the builder didn’t just bend a “U” from the same material I don’t know. Maybe brass was that scarce.

I also don’t know what type of car these would look good under. They are perhaps supposed to imitate National B-1 freight trucks, but are somewhat oversized, maybe the best choice is under an express reefer, painted black and standing in for some type of early high-speed truck.

This other truck type is a follow up on a prior article. There I had found in parts received one of these trucks, and now I have two more! These very early looking sand cast bronze trucks came to me on this heavy duty well type flat car, with a hole in the middle. The car itself is soldered together in brass.

These have a different type of bolster than the orphan truck I had previously found, but have similar wheels (probably Nason) and are three rail. So the car can’t operate on my layout as it is, but at least the car tracks OK. As these trucks came with this car, probably I will keep them there, but with new wheelsets when the car makes its way through the shop to decals.