Two for the load The pulpwood load
The gondola sides needed to have some dents and scars from hard use added before the logs were stacked in it. I experimented on an old boxcar, making dents with a low wattage sol- dering iron. The work was done out- doors but could have been done inside in a well ventilated space. I tried keep- ing the iron clean by putting a piece of heavy duty aluminum foil between the tip and plastic, but the foil tore. With practice, pressing the tip inside the car created scale-sized bumps and dents on the outside of the panels. Except for melting two small holes in the car, this worked well. The holes were patched
COLLECTION OF BOB’S PHOTOS, FCNW38: IRON MOUNTAIN, MICHIGAN: AUG. 1964
The finished load (above) captures the appearance of the proto- type’s tightly packed logs. The larger logs were concentrated near the bottom with smaller logs filling in at the ends and at the
with thin cyanoacrylate and a little baking soda, then the area was very scraped with a sharp No. 11 blade to smooth the surface and form a bump. Those spots were later “rusted” more heavily with acrylic paints.
The outside of the gondola looked fine, but the inside was full of globs of melted styrene and deep craters. Although the appearance was not a problem, the lumps were chopped off with a fresh sin- gle-edge razor blade and the gouges filled with baking soda and cyanoacry- late to reinforce the thin spots. Next, a pine block was cut to fit the interior and sit about ¹/₈″ inch lower than the sides. (That filler saved hav- ing to chop an entire carload of scale logs, which was not something that sounded like fun.)
The biggest concern for this load was the standing logs at each end. The twigs collected for the pulpwood logs were far too brittle to survive sticking up like that, so I used bamboo skewers with different diameters. They were blasted for a second or two with a heat gun and while hot given small bends
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top. Pulpwood can be cut to fit either the full width of a gondola or be half as wide, as on the author’s model. The logs are twigs and some have been painted and dry-brushed to look like birch.
and twists to look less like skewers and more like skinny tree trunks. The bends set when the bamboo cooled. Next, the poles were tapered slightly
with coarse sandpaper,
which also
added texture for bark. A couple tooth- picks were used, too. To match the twig log load, many colors of acrylic craft
NOVEMBER 2012
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