Loads for gondolas

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I have been reading about the gondolas in another thread and has made me start to wonder about the loads that are hauled in them. I know that scrap metal and pipe were common, as for other loads such as coal or rock, how was the car unloaded? I am modeling in the mid '70’s in HO if that makes any difference. Thanks Mike

2

Clam shell cranes or men with shovels were how some of them were unloaded, depending on what the load was. Even today, clam shell cranes are used to transfer coal from gondolas into the tenders of some steam excursion trains.

In the days of steam operation, cinders from a roundhouse were sometimes loaded into gondolas and hauled out to track maintenance sites for use as ballast, where they had to be unloaded by hand if a crane was not available.

3

Loads in gons…

  • Anything that it doesn’t matter too much if it gets wet.
  • Anything that can’t be easily palletised and whizzed in and out of a boxcar by a forklift. (For the 70s on this would be prefered for any loading).
  • Surprisingly not timber very often. Awkward to get in and secure properly as well as to get out. Lumber was carried in boxcars from at least the 1880s - some of the drawings I have show a small door high in the car ends for lumber loading… how do I know that’s what it was for? It’s labeled as a “lumber door”! [:)]. That said - you will see gons with stakes jammed between the sides and loads of timber and sometimes rough-cut lumber… just to prove me wrong!
  • The problem in a Gon is securing the load so stuff like machinery would tend to go on flats where there are tie down points along the floor edge… but… some gons had tie down fittings inside… trouble is very few models (except IIRC the LBF Gons or the P2K ones) have them …and they are hard to spot in pics. You can do some racking out within a Gon to secure machinery type loads.
  • One big trouble with Gons is that the sides tend to get bowed outward by all the bashing about they get… this doesn’t help when you want to use the (weakened) side for securing the load.
  • Aggregates and some coal obviously. Track ballast as well. You’d get them out by back hoe as much as possible followed up with shovels and brooms concentrating the stuff onto the bucket. unless it was not your day when it would all be your job with a shovel.
  • Another load in the “aggregates” department is spent rail ballast plus anything from masonry and ties to lumps of rail or girder mixed in with it. Also all the stuff that gets dumped trackside… including shopping trolleys, bikes, motorcycles, cars, cookers, fridges…
  • Barrels/drums would have been a Gon load but you’re looking at palletisation and boxcars again in the 70s.
4

Thanks Dave! An excellent post. Some gons do have nailable floors. I can’t remember which, but I read the options for doing floors in a model gon and they specifically mentioned that it could be ordered one of three ways, wood, steel or nailable steel. I assume the nailable one would be similar to the box car type. I’ll have to check my references to be sure.

5

I’ve seen telephone poles loaded in gons, I’m not sure of method of securing though.

6

Neutrino- Where in Florida are you?

Flip

7

Dave’s answer is one of the most thorough I’ve seen on this forum!

To add to his list, add:

  1. Vehicles. The USA before about 1970 had a chronic shortage of flat cars, and drop-end gons were regularly used to haul bulldozers, tractors, and even busses around when a flat couldn’t be found. This was an extremely common practice during war years.

  2. Pulpwood. The concept of a pulpwood flat is a fairly recent one, with that type of car only being invented in the late 1940s. Even today, pulpwood is loaded into flats (on end, rather than laid flat on, er…flats)

  3. Offal. Animal guts. Chitlins. Talk to any old time railroader, and virtually all of them will have one close encounter with an old gondola loaded to the rim with rotting entrails. It sounds disgusting (and is), but that’s how the stuff was shipped from slaughterhouses to rendering plants before the EPA. Those old timers would remark about both the stench and the giant clouds of flies that followed the cars.

So Dave’s initial answer is essentially correct: anything that won’t get hurt by getting wet.

8

I remember 5 gondola cars parked beside a busy road in Calgary, Alberta filled to the top with old small green 7-up bottles, so just about anything that fits will go in.

9

fec153 - Kissimmee or little Puerto Rico/Disney World.

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  1. What sort of steel product are you calling “Armco”?

  2. Yes there were gons with nailable steel floors, some of the PRR G36 class, for example.

KL

11

A couple blocks from my house is a siding where local sawmills bring fresh cut cross ties and they are stacked and loaded into gondolas by a grapple. The smell of fresh cut oak travels some distance!

Jim

12

Pulpwood is a common load in the area of MN I model. It makes a neat gondola load, as it is piled up much higher than the sides of the car. The latest NP Hist.Soc. magazine had an article about hauling coal on the NP between Duluth/Superior and the Twin Cities, it pointed out that for many years coal dealers used clamshell unloaders so preferred coal be delivered in gondolas rather than hoppers. This apparently was true (at least for more rural coal dealers) into the seventies.

13

Dave had a good reply to what was hauled in a gon. You can bet just about anything that is Heavy will be hauled in a gon. I have some gons that are carring large machinery, pipes, a couple of scrap gons, metal bales, cinders, coal, ballast, and I am working on one now that will carry steel out of East Chicago mills. Kevin

14

mike ive seen gons of aggregates unloaded by by excavators before. they are driven up on the ends and straddle each car in succesion.

tom

15

Jerry,

Small world, I’m in Kissimmee too. I think you bought a Genesis 60’ auto-box in Burlington Green off eBay from me. Ended up taking a job offer in Orlando and moving from Muskogee, Oklahoma to Kissimmee this summer.

Mark Gosdin
Modeling BN-C&S-FW&D, living in Central Florida. Hablan Espanol?

16

Thanks for all the great input. As of right now I have only 2 Gons on the layout, one is filled with steel wool (I know what you are thinking but is all glued together very well and will not come apart) This represents a load of scrap wire. Tha other one I am thinking of taking the little gears out of an old printer and painting them some rust colors and such to represent a load of scrap gears. I also like the idea of hauling roof truses in a gon, will make a stop at the lumber yard.

Here is a pic of the loaded gon, what do you think? Mike

17

What goes in gons? Steel shapes,steel plates,steel coils,junk truck trailers,angle iron,pulp wood,old batteries,dirty hay from stock yards,garbage,old dump truck beds,mill scrap,scrap tires,scrap aluminum,crushed glass,pipes of all types,old railroad ties,old rail and just about any thing else that doesn’t need protected.

18

Up in my neck of the woods Alcoa gets large ingots 4 or 6 to a gon ( depending on size) they sit at a slant with wood slats between them. Alcoa uses a crane to get them but it has a pincher type arrangement that squeezes 4 small teeth into the aluminum and then up in the air they go.

Also what we all call “slinkies” go in them. thats those steel wire bundles that well look like slinkies.

Gons haul it all man.

19

Highway crash barrier sections, mainly the miles and miles of straight stuff… you got any alternates to load? [:)]

While I’m here… at least into the 70s we “handballed” loads of bricks on/off trucks and earlier large consignments went by rail (Bedford to London between the wars for the council house estate building programmes… billions of bricks). Anyone who’s ever done it know you need to use gloves! Where I worked between school and college we were near the brickfields so the loads came in early morning and still hot. A netted load wasn’t so bad as the net let the dust blow off but a sheeted load was a monster. I always used to get out to the truck sharp so that, having unsheeted, I was up on the truck with the driver chucking the things down.

Building stone, dressed, semi-dressed or not dressed could go in Gons… loads of packing and craned in/out.

I think that so far we’ve also forgotten gons with drop floors… normally flat but could dump (almost) like a hopper. Very early I’ve seen “convertible gons” that culd become side unloaders when the floor was re-arranged. Like a lot of early variable cars I don’t think that they lasted long.

Someone mentioned offal… subject to sheeting it down I imagine trash would have been loaded in gons… maybe the trucks backed up on a ramp or dock… and taken out with grabs. I know that trash trains on the SECR about 1905

20

Pre-assembled boxcar sides.

At a spot nearby woodchip gons filled with building demolition waste from the northeast are unloaded into trucks for backfill into old stripmines.

KL