Has anyone added a more detailed coal to your steam tenders?
Such as glueing on some Woodland Scenic tenders to it?
Any thoughts or how to do it? what you used or did?
What would it do to the value of your steam locomotive?
I usually glue on some real scale coal on top of the “factory” load, or I make a base of foam, paint it black and glue coal to that. I use Elmer’s so if someone wants to remove it someday all they need is warm water.
Can’t say I have any steam locomotives or tenders for that matter. But what I’ve done to twenty roundhouse five bay coal hoppers. I used real coal,crushed with the trusty hammer smash O matic. Then glued or gooed whitch ever you prefer,them. The hardest part was finding coal,here in the south.
I have done it to all of my Steamers. It adds so much more to the look of it than just the factory load. I took some coal that had been ground up in a normal household blender, sifted it to groups all mostly the same size, and then painted a think layer of Elmer’s glue on the tender and then sprinkeled the coal onto the tender and pressed it on to make it stick. then after the glue has dried, i gave it a light coat of thinned gloss black paint, just to keep its shiney luster. I will try to take some pics to post to show the difference.
Instead of coal, I use a material that is used, rather than sand, as an aid to traction in the locomotives at the steel plant where I worked. It is black and shiny and about the same size as H.O. scale ballast. It is also quite heavy: an Athearn 34’ two bay hopper loaded with it weighs about 8 oz. Rather than gluing it to the cast coal load that comes with most tenders, I remove the cast load and then build a bunker using styrene. I don’t bother with too much detail inside, even though I always detail the rest of the tender. On some tenders, the bunker can be deeper than on others: it depends on whether or not you’ve got a lot of electronic stuff where the coal should be. By the way, I always add at least a couple of ounces of lead to the inside of the rear of the tender, to balance the load when the coal is added. With a fully modelled bunker, you can run with any amount less than a full load or with one heaped high and spilling back onto the tender deck. The added weight helps with electrical pickup and keeps the tender on the track when pulling or backing up with heavy trains.
Both locomotives have loose coal loads as described above.
Wayne
I would like to see more manufacturers give modelers the option of having a partially depleted coal pile in the tender. Let’s face it, once the engine has a few hours on the road the coal pile is getting pretty thin. I would even like to have one or two locomotives on my layout that the coal load is so low that you can see the stoker screw in the bottom of the slope sheet.
the bachmann china locos actually come with a little pouch of real coal for you to glue into the tender!
i think that is a nice touch that would be very easy to do on their entire range very cheaply.
Peter
I need to hop on this thread,(sorry). I have WS mine run and lump coal.Which would you see in a steam tender? Can anyone give me the general uses for each?
On a few of my steam locos, I have cut out the stock, cast in coal load and made a coal bin, complete with slope sheets, then glued in pulverized coal so that the bin was only about half full. As stated above, much more realistic looking.
The Grizzly Northern coal burners are always ready for the call, with the bunkers just topped up. I pour black plastic granules on top of the moulded plastic coal, above the retaining boards at the back and roughly sloping towards the front and then generously dribble thinned white glue over the load to secure it, first making sure there are no holes that would cause leakage, then allow to dry over several days.
The granules are about the size of coarse coffee grounds, coarser than Woodland Scenic’s mine run coal, which looks too fine to me.
Each tender coal load is unique.
PS: I’ve since checked, the granules, probably from Sylvan, are about the same as Woodland Scenics course ballast.
Ho scale coal,and elmers works for me,I was just thinking about that a while ago,when I noticed the picture in my sig of my MIKE , got to get some coal in the tender!
JIM[:D][^]
OK here is my IHC with fresh load of scale coal,and new engneer on board what do you think???
JIM
I used a mix of 50% water and 50% elmers. Brushed it on, and sprikled pre crushed HO scale coal on the tenders and fake coal loads. Worked great for me!
Stoker coal should be about a scale 1 to 3 inches. Lump (shovel) more like 6 to 9 inches. So, fuel up your engines accordingly.
I add coal but I think it is wrong to fill the tender as if it was just refueled. The only time the tender would look this way is right after leaving a coal dock. My preference is to fill a coal bunker 2/3 to 3/4 full with a slope to the front as if the stoker had used some. Nothing wrong the other way just my personal preference.