Okay, really dumb question. My Kato starter kit came with a pair of empty gondola cars. I would like to put some sort of a load in them, but I have no idea what to put in them. I am modeling late 40’s to early 50’s. Suggestions?
What industries do you have on your layout? What are the industries local to the area of the country you are modeling. I could be ballast, coal, scrap metal, ping pong balls, or sand.
Chip
Limited industry, mostly farm land and a town. There will be a grain mill and a freight depot, but for right now, that’s about it. We are freelancing northern Utah with a little desert southwest influence.
Add a team track…The gons could be a load of pipe or gravel.
The Kato gondolas I’m looking at appear to have doors in the sides. That might useful for hauling sugar beets.
Ed
Sugar beets! Perfect! Thanks, Ed.
(Now, what to use to simulate itty-bitty sugar beats.)
I have heard of people using some kind of seeds. Maybe it was caraway seeds.
I sue sifted bird seeds and a dose of green paint to replicate putrid avacados for several of my S scale gondolas, I suspect i’m the only one who models this!
Dave
The Gondolas are a Japanese prototype
Would Bacos be too big for sugar beets?
Technically all the cars appear to be Japanese prototypes.
The gons sorta kinda look like GS gons which where the western equivalent of a hopper car (coal, rock, ore, beets, etc) and also a gon (steel products, lumber pipe castings, machinery, cable, wire, scrap, etc). So anything that could be dumped or loaded with a crane and could stand getting wet could be loaded in the car.
Unfortunately, there would be a couple of problems with Bacos. First, they would be too big. Sugar beets grow to be up to one foot long. I am modeling N scale, so my beets would need to be less than .1 of an inch long. Second, sugar beets are greyish white in color.
Maybe I will fill it with watermelons. They are a little bigger. I could just go get some small, oblong seeds and paint them green.
Anise seeds make very convincing sugar beets in HO scale, but I can’t make any suggestions for N scale.
Gondolas can carry anything which isn’t weather-sensitive and will fit into them, including coal, gravel, sand, lumber, steel (coils, ingots, bars, billets, re-bar, rails, plate, structural), machinery (crated or open), pipes, poles, pulpwood, offal, scrap, and tons of other things.
These are HO…
“Empty” gondola:
Steel fabrications:
Rail:
Scrap:
Poles:
Wheels:
Gravel:
Pipe:
Wayne
The various classes of ToKi bogie gons had (have) drop sides, hinged at the bottom. They could literally carry anything weatherproof - logs, timber, coal, gravel, crated or palletized younameit, drummed goods, steel or precast concrete shapes, even narrower-gauge rolling stock. They are rated 30 tons capacity (bearing in mind that the JNR is 42 inch gauge) and are very different from US prototype designs. For one thing, the entire length of both sides can be dropped, and the panels can be lowered through 180 degrees of rotation, effectively creating a low-bulkhead flat for loading and unloading.
Bear in mind that both inbound and outbound loads are enroute from or to somewhere on the layout to somewhere off the layout. A lot of those loads will actually be running from somewhere off the layout to somewhere else off the railroad, just passing through.
On my layout the 30-ton gons are loaded inbound with whatever randomly-selected waybills might specify. Outbound loads are logs, timber and, occasionally, coal. The random inbound loads are live - crates, drums or whatever accompany the waybills, loaded and unloaded by the giant 0-5-0 as necessary.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
I just found out my grandfather grew sugar beats so now I am obsessed with trying to figure out what to use as sugar beats in my gondolas, was well as putting a sugar beet field in my layout farm. If anyone has any ideas as to something to use as n-scale sugar beets, let me know. Here is what a sugar beet looks like (about 12" long):
My Gons are carrying rusty scrap which can be most anyrthing I have lying arould painted brown rust color.
If you have a local hobby shop, take a look at N scale loads from Chooch or others. Maybe a mine run coal load could be repainted to fill the role of sugar beets.
I think I may have my beets. I found sugar beets loads for an Intermountain gondola. I bet I can make it work.