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