Improvised gondola on 42' bulkhead flatcar

[Beekster]

This little project was inspired by one of the reference books I've picked up recently, a Kalmbach book on 25 freight car projects in HO and N scale.  I was intrigued by the use of a 50' bulkhead flat car to create an improvised field-expedient gondola by making sheet steel side panels with H-beam supports that fit into the stake pockets on the side of the car.  It seems that cars like that are fairly common for maintenance of way crews to use on their endless job of keeping the track in good shape.  Given the space limitations on my eventual layout, I need to keep most of my rolling stock under 60' long so that it won't look odd on the curves.  So, I decided to use a shorter car than the one used in the book article.  Another reason to go short is my time frame of 1975-85.  Short 40'-42' cars would have been common from the mid-1930s through the war years and beyond.  But by the seventies, they were old and limited in capacity so mainline operators discarded them.  I figured that such a cast-off relic would be useful to a short line or industrial operator like my forest products firm.  Capacity wouldn't matter to them so much as availability at low cost.  So this arrived the other day:




It was less than $27 all in from eBay.  This firm is long out of business, but their stuff was apparently quite state of the art in the mid-1970s.  Today they aren't considered all that detailed, and mostly for collectors.  But I figured it would be good enough for a basic kitbash project.  The parts shown all come in the box; the sprue of stakes won't be used.  They don't fit all that well anyway.  The cheesy couplers will go in the trash.  The main panel was a little warped but supergluing the steel weight to the underside and clamping it down straightened things up nicely.  But there's more stuff to do on the underside.

Hmm...That doesn't look so good, does it?  The underframe shouldn't be floating in air like this.  The styrene bit is .060" strip which is a little too thick but gave me an idea of what I'd have to do.  I'll spare you the details, but I sandwiched strip stock together to .050" thickness and punched out holes for the truck mounting stanchions.  Things underneath look a lot better now:

And this is the car pretty much as it would be completed right from the box; only the brake wheel isn't installed.  That arrived broken, so I'll have to figure something out.  The trucks and couplers are on temporarily here so that I can check the coupler height with my gauge, and they sit fine...a little high, but not so much as to cause problems.  The I will pull the wheels from the trucks to prime & paint them.  I might replace the ancient wheels too with some that are a more accurate scale diameter, which will also drop the couplers a wee bit.  But the axles are quite long, so it will take some sleuthing to find the right size.


I mentioned that the kit's stakes didn't fit.  Neither did Evergreen .060" H-column stock, not by a long shot.  Things are better now after over two tedious hours of grinding with the Dremel and a square file; I can get the Evergeen stock in the stake pockets now.  Some of them are a little worse for wear for all the grinding and file work, but other than patching up the one that got thin enough to break through I'm not going to worry about imperfect stake pockets.  It will add to the impression of an elderly overworked car overdue for the scrap yard.

So now it's on to fabricating the sides.  Since the bulkheads aren't all the way to the ends of the car (they did look like this; I checked), a standard 39' piece of rail won't fit in this car.  Oh well; it will have to make do with other junk like old ties and scrap rail that's closer to 36' feet in scale.  I'm pretty sure no one will notice that when it's sitting in the yard.

[mike]

This car looks great now!   I am sure the finished gondola will be beautiful!  Enjoy the build!

[Beekster]

May 30, 2024 12:28:24 GMT -6 mike said:

This car looks great now!   I am sure the finished gondola will be beautiful!  Enjoy the build!

So far I am enjoying it, Mike!  One thing about most HO rolling stock kits:  They are really simple.  Same goes for most ready-to-roll stuff, which is pretty easy to take apart.  More on that in another project to come.  I didn't do anything with brake rod detail on the boxcar but I might mess with that for this one just to learn how to do it.  It will be pure guesswork, as I have no idea what the underside of one of these looks like and I doubt that there's a survivor anywhere.  I'm ruing the fact that I didn't do as much photography a decade or more ago when I happened to visit rail museums on vacation.  I've always had the interest, partly from childhood memories of my train set and partly because of the close industrial relationship between many of the coachbuilders and casting suppliers to the wartime production of Sherman tanks and their variants.  I wasn't thinking of model reference on those trips.  Now I am, and that might just be a reason to revisit some of these places on future vacations.  Haven't been to Banff in a couple of decades, for example, and there's a nice little museum in Revelstoke and viewpoints for the Spiral Tunnel nearby.  Add those to the itinerary for the next Canadian Rockies road trip.

Plan for this one is overall black with rust patches, with the wood deck in various shades of gray/tan before weathering.  Not sure yet if I will do the same for the bulkheads, but they are faced with wood so I probably ought to do that and hand-paint the black steel supports.  The sides & stanchions will be several shades of old rust.  Now that I'm thinking about it, I should probably patch it (paint fresh patches for required stenciling) and get appropriate decal sheets for that.

[JCON]

Looking good Greg!!!

[mike]

May 30, 2024 13:01:38 GMT -6 Beekster said:

May 30, 2024 12:28:24 GMT -6 mike said:

This car looks great now!   I am sure the finished gondola will be beautiful!  Enjoy the build!

So far I am enjoying it, Mike!  One thing about most HO rolling stock kits:  They are really simple.  Same goes for most ready-to-roll stuff, which is pretty easy to take apart.  More on that in another project to come.  I didn't do anything with brake rod detail on the boxcar but I might mess with that for this one just to learn how to do it.  It will be pure guesswork, as I have no idea what the underside of one of these looks like and I doubt that there's a survivor anywhere.  I'm ruing the fact that I didn't do as much photography a decade or more ago when I happened to visit rail museums on vacation.  I've always had the interest, partly from childhood memories of my train set and partly because of the close industrial relationship between many of the coachbuilders and casting suppliers to the wartime production of Sherman tanks and their variants.  I wasn't thinking of model reference on those trips.  Now I am, and that might just be a reason to revisit some of these places on future vacations.  Haven't been to Banff in a couple of decades, for example, and there's a nice little museum in Revelstoke and viewpoints for the Spiral Tunnel nearby.  Add those to the itinerary for the next Canadian Rockies road trip.

Plan for this one is overall black with rust patches, with the wood deck in various shades of gray/tan before weathering.  Not sure yet if I will do the same for the bulkheads, but they are faced with wood so I probably ought to do that and hand-paint the black steel supports.  The sides & stanchions will be several shades of old rust.  Now that I'm thinking about it, I should probably patch it (paint fresh patches for required stenciling) and get appropriate decal sheets for that.

This sounds like a big project.  The road trip sounds great!  Getting references is a fantastic reason to go!!!  The scenery will be beautiful too.

[Beekster]

The train layout will be a big project that will take a few years to complete, no doubt about it. That's after the remodeling which will create space for it is accomplished, another big project. We'll hire professionals for the carpet & hard floors and electrical work, but I'll do all the repainting myself since I'm pretty good at that. In the meantime, I can tinker with rolling stock, read references, build a scenery diorama to gain experience, and consult with other hobbyists so that I know what I need to do and in what order when it finally comes time to build benchwork and start laying track. This freight car is a pretty minor piece of the whole.

[Beekster]

I got the side panels fabricated yesterday. Pretty straightforward stuff; just Evergreen strip stock chopped to side and squared up. I cut the stanchions a little long and trimmed them after the glue was dry. Well, the first time, anyway. One stanchion popped off one side this morning when I sanded the top surface smooth, and inspection revealed a few more of them were a little loose. I had tried to use minimal glue to keep any from wicking into the stake pockets, but it seems a wee bit more was in order. Fixed now and taped up to dry; might get to shoot primer yet this afternoon.

[BUCKY]

A great project to follow along! I'm in!!

[JCON]

That looks sharp Greg!!!

[Beekster]

Primer was sprayed yesterday, so the car will sit for a couple more days for that to cure...the usual stuff, Tamiya gray surface primer in the tall spray can.


While that's drying, let's talk trucks for a moment. It's virtually universal that rolling stock comes with trucks made of shiny black plastic. This is sometimes called "engineering plastic", but it is shiny and flexible so that the wheels can be removed for cleaning or other purposes (like scale replacements, a topic for later...). Word around the campfire is that regular hobby paints don't adhere well to this material when applied directly. The recommended primer is Tamiya spray Paint for Polycarbonate, available in many (usually bright) colors. This paint is intended for Lexan RC car bodies and retains it's flexibility.



On the left is a truck from this 42' car project, and on the right a heavier truck from a longer depressed-center flat car. The four-wheel truck has been primered with Corsa Gray, and the six-wheel truck has progressed to painting with a grungy brown enamel and a black enamel wash. Using the paint for polycarbonate seems to work just fine, but I'll know for sure when I put wheels back in the trucks which requires flexing them some. Wheels are expected this week, and more on that topic later.

[JCON]

Interesting about the difference in the plastics but makes sense for flexibility...

[BUCKY]

Great tip about the Lexan paint. Keep us posted about how it performs.

[Beekster]

And now to wheels. There are National Model Railroad Association standards for these, which should conform to a specific profile and typically have a flange measurement of .110 thick...Code 110. They also typically measure around a scale 37" in diameter. Most freight cars are 33", some are 36", and some heavy capacity and most passenger cars run 38" diameter wheels. The .110 flange thickness is quite overscale; about .070" (Code 70) is prototypical and .088" (Code 88) is labeled "semi-scale". The true-scale wheels have problems with negotiating turnouts and crossovers on regular commercial track; they drop into the flange gaps and derail. Who uses these? People doing more or less static rail dioramas, and exceptionally skilled folks who lay their own track. The semi-scale wheels usually don't have trouble with commercial track and do look better than the Code 110 wheels. But there's another wrinkle here: Axle profile and width. Some have rounded ends; others needlepoint ends...and the overall width can vary too. So finding a semi-scale or even a Code 110 wheel that is both a more accurate scale diameter and the right axle width can be a fraught endeavor.

So I decided to try to upgrade the wheels for my two flatcars, and partially succeeded. Athearn had what appeared to be what I needed, so I ordered 33" and 36" wheels. Here on the left is the kit wheel from the 42' car kit and the corresponding Athearn 33" wheel.

Not much difference; the kit wheel is actually pretty good for scale which would have been impressive for the time and holds up pretty well now. The only downside are the plastic wheels, which will build up a static charge and attract dust & dirt over time. The all-metal Athearn wheel will not. So I'll use the metal wheels and keep the kit wheels as spares.

The larger wheels were, unfortunately, a bust. They scale out at nearly 40" in diameter, which is bigger than the 37" of the Bachmann metal wheels that came with that car. I'll use the Bachmann wheels, and I'm not sure what to do with the big Athearn ones. Live and learn...

[BUCKY]

Those wheels do look rather similar. And there's always something to learn in our hobby. I didn't know about the static on those plastic wheels.

[JCON]

Send the big ones back! Lol!!!

[Beekster]

I got the base colors down on this one over the weekend:


I will have to touch up the wooden boards on the deck and end plates, and then do a couple of iterations of masking and painting with slightly different shades to represent older and newer boards. There's a little touch up to be done on the side panels, and those will be ready for a flat coat and some weathering with oils and enamel drybrushing. After all the boards are painted the whole car will get a flat coat and then a grimy black oil wash to accentuate the panel lines. Probably some fresh rust spots and streaks, too. Making progress...

[JCON]

Coming along nicely!!!

[Beekster]

Yeah, I've let this one slide a bit. I've been spending time again with the track software. There's progress there, but I am still trying to reconcile several things that don't always mesh well:
1. A track plan that has some interesting curves & elevations and more than one way around the layout.
2. Said track plan on a tabletop design that allows good access to everything. That's a real problem with the space I have, which is 8'x10' with walls on three sides.
3. Room for structures & associated sidings. This is where things get really tricky. The sawmill kit has a fixed footprint and I'm not going to try to modify it. It's got a big footprint at 13"x16" and creating space for it isn't easy. But I don't want to toss that idea out; it sets the whole layout in time & space. And I need a small interchange yard with a locomotive shed as well as space for other rail-served industries like the logging firm itself plus a couple of short sidings for the Maintenance of Way cars & structures.

While messing about with that, I have slowly worked on the expedient gondola. I got the boards touched up this morning, and when everything is dry it will get shot with Dullcote. Last step for now will be a grimy black oil wash to blend everything together. Patching for the required road stenciling will come later, once I have a road name & color scheme picked out.

[Beekster]

Calling this one done for now. It will need patching for the railroad MoW department, once I settle on a road name and colors. I think that I've got that down, so more on that topic when my custom decals are ready. I've given it a thick grimy black wash with artist's oil paint thinned in mineral spirits (which is still drying).

[JCON]

Looks very good Greg!!!