Two for the load Scratchbuilding loads for flat cars and gondolas/Bill Gill “P
iece of cake” was my reply when Tom Armine at the Rensselaer Model Railroad Society asked if I could make a perma- nent load for an open car. I should have said “a couple of pieces” because the 1950’s-era New England, Berk- shire & Western Railroad is a vora- cious line and Tom is constantly build- ing and painting cars to feed it. The new spring operating schedule further whet the railroad’s appetite by run- ning an entire 24-hour fast clock ses- sion instead of the usual daytime schedule. Tom had presciently mailed two HO scale cars to me, a Red Ca- boose CP flat car and a Bowser PRR general service gondola, and I took on the task.
The flat car needed a lumber load PHOTO JACK DELANO: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, AMERICAN MEMORIES, OWI/FSA COLLECTION; C&NW PROVISO YARD, CA. 1943
PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR, UNLESS NOTED
This Library of Congress photo (top) was used as a guide for the author’s HO scale flat car load. Stacks of lumber about four feet high were separated by “stickers” and secured by stakes with
and the gon needed to be filled with pulpwood. Tom had added a peel-and- stick wood deck to the flat car, but oth- erwise assembled both cars out of the box. Whenever possible the club aims for its “green dot” standard for rolling stock, cars with upgraded details and with stand-alone grabs, etc., but it also uses a pragmatic “tan dot” level of de- tail suitable for operating sessions when the layout’s industries clamor for more traffic. These are tan dot cars. I weathered both, then worked up a hunger cutting wood to fill them.
50 Lumber load
Most of us hold onto our magazines; you never know what you will want to know. In this case. Noel Holley’s “Lum- ber loads from the 1940’s and 1950’s” (Model Railroader, June, 1992), Greg Martin’s and Paul Chandler’s “Accu- rate lumber loads” (Mainline Modeler, February, 1991), and on-line photos helped fill both cars accurately. Noel glued up random lengths of 6″×6″ stripwood for the outer shells of his load and tucked shorter staggered pieces in the ends, leaving hollow cen-
wire ties between them at the tops to tighten them. The cross pieces were then nailed between the stakes. Pulpwood was, and is, stacked in cars with the weight of the load holding it in place.
ters. Then, 4″×4″ stakes and 2″×4″ crossties secured the load instead of metal banding. A Jack Delano photo of the C&NW’s Proviso yard circa 1943 captured the same kind of car loads. Greg’s and Paul’s load initially looked similar to the large hardwood loads shipped in the 1950’s from the south- western corner of New York by Fitz- patrick & Weller. However, they used metal strapping on their models. Greg and Paul had scribed solid balsa
blocks to represent stacks of boards be- cause at that time most lumber was not
NOVEMBER 2012
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