Most of my gondolas are black and I lose sight of them from time to time. I usually intersperse a yellow reefer or billboard boxcar to catch my eye.
Would there have been any brightly colored loads for gondolas pre 1949?
Don’t know when but all the beams for the Golden Gate bridge were shipped from Bethlehem Steel already painted in the orange primer.
Scrap metal will be mostly dark or rust, but you can hand-paint pieces any bright color you’d like. A few shiny, sharp edges can catch the eye, too.
During the WWII scrap drives a lot of brightly-painted sheet steel would end up as open gondola loads headed for a steel mill - everything from automotive fenders and quarter panels to old roadside signs with the 24-sheet billboard still in place. Lots of smaller signs, too.
Quite a few loads would be covered with tan (canvas) or blue jean stock tarpaulins. The ubiquitous baby blue plastic came much later.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with black gons)
Here is a photo of a 16" Naval Rifle (shortened and plugged) that was brought to my plant in 1959 to be used as a 45,000 psi. pressure vessel. This one is off the USS Colorado BB-45. It was painted a shade of moss green. Nice details of the blocking here, too.
It would make for an interesting load. AMB Laserkit makes a resin 16" gun kit but for this shortened version you could scratch build something.
Even though this mirror blank was loaded onto a flatcar, since it is being loaded by crane it could just as easily have gone into a gondola.
Also, there are lots of bulk chemical containers like the ones Athearn used to offer that can go into gons. They were painted bright colors and the lime ones weathered to white. They had some silver merchandise containers, too.
Walthers made some nicely detailed coke containers for gons but they were pretty pricey if you were going to fill a gon with the number needed (8-10-12?)
Hope this helps, Ed
How about raw sulfur? It would be yellow.
Tom
The mirror is on a flat for clearance reasons
Deck height of gondola or flat was the same at 3’ 9". Clearance was not an issue, we just thought the flat would be easier to load. Mirror blank was only going from Euclid, Ohio to Toledo, Ohio to the Owens-Illinois plant for grinding. The O-I plant had an overhead hoist that wouldn’t have the height to lift the housing out of a gondola.
Ed
Why not just truck it.
Russell,
The mirror blank was 42,000 lbs and the housing was another 50,000 lbs making it a bit heavier than the 80,000 lb gross vehicle weight allowed on the Ohio Turnpike at the time.
Happy Modeling, Ed
Hello All,
Post WWII there were lots of reclaimed war material being shipped by rail.
To add color think of light colored canvas tarps covering the various loads of decommissioned weapons.
You could also consider loads of reclaimed aluminium ingots being transported on flat cars or gondolas and coiled steel loads.
Also, the post war housing boom meant almost endless loads of cut timber. Loads of sewer pipes; either gray cement or red terra-cotta, would add color as well.
Even adding white colored tanker cars would add some contrast to your string of black rolling stock.
Hope this helps.
My first thoughts were of the afore mentioned tarps, either tan or green. The items they are covering can be a variety of shapes, adding interest. Farm or industrial equipment come in a variety of colors and shapes also.
Have fun,
Richard
Here are a few colorful loads
http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/152-201
Because this is a model RAILROAD forum?
-Bob
Wayne
Those are beautiful loads, Wayne! Nice blocking work.
I just happened to remember a project I started a few years ago and never got around to finishing and, although they might not be real colorful, they make a nice gon load… Auto frames. You don’t see them much today—unitized construction?—but in the post War years I remember seeing them pretty frequently.
I’ll have to update this post when I find the name of the manufacturer of the frame loads I have.
Ed
Thanks for your kind words, Ed. [:D]
The automobile frames are from JJM Railroad Enterprises, 80 frames to a box. I used Accurail 41’ AAR gondolas, so had several frames leftover from each carload.
I built mine with the end racks and floor blocking separate from the loads. That way, I can run the cars loaded or without the frames, or remove the racks and blocking so that the car can be used for other loads.
These are considered excess height cars on my layout, and when in frame service, have strict routing instructions.
Wayne
Are the beam loads in the gon and on the flat car scratchbuilt, or are they re-purposed from something else?
The orange loads are part of an overhead crane, and are spread over a consist of several cars:
All of the crane parts (plus the blocking) are made from styrene: .060" sheet for the larger surfaces and Evergreen strip and structural shapes for the details and blocking. I’ve yet to add tie-downs and some other blocking, but these cars would run as a special move, probably with several boxcars supposedly loaded with the smaller components, such as motors and gearcases.
The loads are removeable as units with their blocking. I hope to built a few more, somewhat different ones, just to add variety.
While the company producing these parts is based on a real one and is considered to be an on-layout industry, there’s no actual factory modelled. Instead, I have a small staging area beneath my main south staging yard, consisting of two tracks, each about 6’ long. These two tracks can represent any number of industries, including ones too large to model even partially, and I can add to the companies located here simply by making-up a new one: empties in and loads out, or loads in and empties out. It’s a great traffic generator which takes up space only beneath other space already in use.
In this photo, it’s the two tracks immediately above the two locos in the foreground.
Thanks for the info. They are very well done.