Brawa 50640 K25 Hinged-Cover Wagon, DB, Era III

Brawa 50640 K25 Hinged-Cover Wagon, DB, Era III Product Details

Description

About the model: The DB K25 hinged-lid car dates from Era III and features a highly detailed appearance and select features, such as separately applied rivets and finely engraved rivets. The model is 101 mm long and bears the road number “340 000.”

About the prototype: To transport moisture-sensitive goods, such as lime, the railroads introduced so-called hinged-lid cars in various designs very early on. The development of this car type led, in the second half of the 1920s, to the K Elberfeld 80 001 and subsequent models, which met the interchangeable design standards in effect at the time and were standardized accordingly. The cars, which were 8.1 m (without a handbrake) or 8.8 m (with a handbrake) long, had the short wheelbase of 4 m typical for that time and could be loaded with up to 17.5 metric tons. To withstand this weight, the side walls and hinged lids were reinforced with conspicuously crossed ribs. While the original paint scheme was RAL 8012, with the undercarriage and contrasting hardware in RAL 9005, this quickly became covered in a light gray film of dust when the cars were loaded with lime. The 991 cars delivered (up to 1933) were also the last hinged-top cars built in series production. Although the hinged-top cars could be loaded mechanically, they could only be unloaded by hand. This circumstance led to a shift in the development of cars for transporting such goods—even during the Reichsbahn era—toward self-unloading cars, and there were no significant new developments after the K25. Nevertheless, the cars classified as K25 by the Bundesbahn remained in regular service until the late 1960s and were occasionally used as service cars even after that.

Features:

• Gauge: H0
• Era: III
• Road number: 340 000
• Length over buffers: 101 mm
• Short-coupler kinematics
• Design differences specific to variants
• Interchangeable metal axle holders
• Separately attached brake system
• Finely engraved rivets
• Scaled body