Empty Gondola Project

Empty Gondola Project

I've been working on several HO scale gondola projects involving various loads. This particular project originally started out to be a gondola with a load of large earth moving equipment tires.

The car was an Accurail 3700 Series 41-foot steel gondola lettered for the Pittsburgh & West Virginia Railroad. Accurail's description and photo of this car had a build date of November 1948 and a reweight date of May 1952, good for my 1956 modeling era.

So that's what I ordered from Accurail. Imagine my surprise when the car I received had the same body but a build date of May 1926. Looks like I'll need to do some paint patch/decal work in the future.

The tire load came from a general hobby shop that carries R/C models. I had been looking for tires for several months and settled on eight tires for an R/C car that perfectly fit the gondola and looked OK, not great, for earth moving equipment tires.

Then the project took an unexpected turn. As I began weathering the car with special attention to the steel floor I realized that the rusted effect was better than my usual efforts. I had been using a combination of AK Interactive washes, Vallejo paints and Doc O'Brien's weathering powders built up in layers with each layer receiving a protective coat of flat finish.

All of this work would have been hidden with the tire load so the plan morphed in an empty gondola project.

The tire load is destined for another gondola awaiting inspection, weathering, etc.

Caswell Gondola Project

 

The Caswell gondolas were among the most distinctive cars in the Santa Fe freight car fleet. The Caswell system was marketed by the National Dump Car Company and the cars were built by American Car & Foundry. The dump system consisted of horizontal shafts with pinion gears moving on racks in the cross bearers to open and close the doors. The doors were opened by cranks on the ends of the cars. These controlled shafts that ran the length of the car. As the shaft was cranked towards the center sill, the doors opened.

 

From 1905 to 1927 the Santa Fe acquired 8,800 Caswell gondolas. Many cars were rebuilt in the 1940s with AB brakes and side stiffeners. As older classes were rebuilt, solid floors were laid on top of the drop floors but the shafts were not removed.

 

Some 8,450 of them were the basis of the model made by the InterMountain Railway Company.

 

I began with an InterMountain HO scale car. I've had the car for years, hidden away in a box. At the recent NMRA National Train Show I found a perfect resin used tie load from Monroe Models.

The load motivated me to liberate the car from storage and work on it.

 

I gave the car a base coat of Tamiya Clear Coat spray (TS-80). This is a dead flat finish that comes out as a very fine spray. It's much better than Testors  Dullcote, which was reformulated several years ago. I then applied a wash of Doc O'Brien's Rusty Red powder mixed with 91 percent isopropyl alcohol. This wash toned down the otherwise crisp, bright lettering. Then another Tamiya Clear Coat was applied to seal the powder.

 

I used various PanPastel artists' dry color media applied with soft brushes to weather the car. I gave the car an overall dusty look with a little dark grime along the bottom and some limited rust effects on the dumping hardware and side framing. The car's reporting marks became a little too obscure so I erased some of the PanPastel media with a soft white rubber eraser and then sparingly reapplied more PanPastel to that area.

 

I painted the wheel faces with Floquil Grimy Black and the truck frames with Krylon Red Oxide Primer. I've painted a lot of truck frames over the years with several brands of red oxide primer. I have had a few paint failures but that was due to being lazy and not cleaning the mold release off the trucks. The truck frames also received a little PanPastel treatment.

 

I added a few white chalk marks using a Prismacolor Verithin artist pencil.

 

The four-piece resin tie load was a little too long for the interior length of the gondola so I removed several protruding bottom ties with a rail nipper and sanded the cuts smooth. I painted a few ties with grimy black for a little visual variation and gave the four pieces a light spray of Tamiya Clear Coat.

 

The ties were secured with a small dab of Tacky Glue to allow later removal if needed.

 

Although there were a lot of steps involved, each step was quite simple. I'm pleased with the result.

 

A Smudge Oil Loading Facility For The Citrus Belt Railway

A Smudge Oil Loading Facility For The Citrus Belt Railway

I decided to upgrade my smudge oil facility by adding an area with a fuel loading rack from the Walthers truck-served fuel distributor and some details such as a small office, fire hydrant, fire hose, oil drums, pallets, light poles, people and vegetation.

I didn't want to assemble and install all the small parts inside the fuel loading rack so I took a cue from another modeler who placed a wall over the front of the structure and extended some pipes through the wall to the outside.

The overall design and arrangement is not based on any specific prototype. It's just my concept of how such a scene should be represented.

The next thing I need to do is to add some oil stains under the outlet pipes and some signage.

Below are photos of this area plus the smudge oil tanks and the unloading spur.

The two small smudge oil tanks are similar to the tanks that were in Redlands, CA, and the large tank is similar to the tank that was located in Claremont, CA. The small tanks are Rix oil tanks with roofs from Rix grain bins, as the original oil tank roofs were too steep.

Behind the smudge oil spur is the Genco Olive Oil Company. You may remember this company as the legitimate business front for the Corleone crime family in the Godfather movies. The sign was found on-line and made on my printer.

Some Random Scenes

These are some random scenes from the railroad.
Abandoned industrial spur.

Former spur used for circus-style loading and unloading

A work-in-progress cattle loading pen and ramp.

Leftovers from a recent track rehabilitation project.

One of two hobo camps on the railroad. I can't get these folks to move!

Along the mainline. In the background are several citrus packing houses.

A scene like this has been done to death but I just had to stage the 1956 Buick CHP car from the TV show "Highway Patrol" starring Broderick Crawford. I'm still looking for an appropriate HO scale figure of a man in a suit and hat.





Gondola With Automobile Frame Load Project

Gondola With Automobile Frame Load Project

I finally finished this very satisfying but simple project. It all started with a similar gondola I saw on Andrew Merriam's layout during the Central Coast Railroad Festival last October. That motivated me to look for prototype examples.

What I found were gondolas with an assortment of load restraining designs, each similar but probably specific to individual railroads. But the photos gave me ideas for my own design to be applied to an InterMountain HO scale Southern Pacific gondola.

The gondolas (and probably the flat cars) that carried automobile frames usually were in dedicated service. The SP community I consulted could not say for sure that SP had any such dedicated cars. Most of the prototypes I saw were from eastern railroads with the notable exception of the Santa Fe. At the time I couldn't find the appropriate Santa Fe Ga-44 gondola that InterMountain once produced. This car would have been my first choice, although two automobile frame kits would have been necessary to complete the load and a lot of frames would have been left over.

The HO scale automobile frames were made by JJM Railroad Enterprises. These can be purchased from B&G Train World. Scroll down this link:

http://www.bgtrainworld.com/storefront/shop/category.aspx?catid=25

On the DT&I Modelers Page website Scott Heiden designed a simple cardboard jig for assembling the automobile frames:

http://dti.railfan.net/Model_Building_Articles/Freight_Cars/DT&I_9100s_Model/G31DFrameRackInstr.html

I built a similar jig from two wood blocks glued to cardboard that was glued to Styrofoam. From the prototype photos and Scott's example I chose forty-degrees as the angle for the frames to rest upright in the gondola. I used double-sided tape to secure one frame in place on the jig at a forty degree angle and then added five more frames to the jig, gluing frames two through six together and leaving the first frame in place as part of the jig.

 Straight pins helped to keep the frames together as the solvent glue set. I then glued the groups of five frames together until I had enough for one side of the gondola. These frame groups were secured with a strip of plastic glued along the bottom. This strip would not be visible on the finished load once it was in the gondola.

I constructed restraining hardware (frame cradle and hold-down harness) from Evergreen styrene channel and "L" stock. I added stained strip wood to the contact surfaces. Lastly, I used brass wire for the hold-down harness tension rods.

I drilled two holes in the hold-down harness for the rods. On the top side of the hole I inserted Tichy plastic nut-bolt-washer castings.

If you don't want to scratch-build the restraining hardware, American Model Builders does offer a kit for restraining hardware at $18.00. Here is the link: http://www.bgtrainworld.com/storefront/shop/item.aspx?itemid=3379

Like I said, this was very satisfying but simple project. I paid $13.00 for the auto frames and the other materials were from the parts and scratch-building trays.

Bob Chaparro

Hemet, CA

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After I finished the project I found this very informative article on automobile frame loads by John Brown:

http://www.augusthealthservices.com/login_files/CLINIC%20HANDOUTS/C597_Brown%20Auto%20Frame%20loads%20hand%20out.doc