Hey all! I model central NY, CT, and Southern MA from 1975-1985, and I recently picked up a bunch of D&H equipment to expand my roster. 2 of the cars I got were a flatcar and a gondola, both 50’, and I wanted to add loads to them, preferably removable. What would make the most sense given the locale and era? Thanks!
Well, maybe the mid 1980s is not the best time to model D&H:
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In 1984, Guilford Transportation Industries purchased the D&H as part of a plan to operate a larger regional railroad from Maine and New Brunswick in the east, to New York City and the Midwest in the west, Montreal in the north, and the Philadelphia/Washington, DC, area in the south. For only $500,000, Guilford purchased the entire railroad. The price tag reflected the D&H’s horrid financial shape and the poor condition of its physical plant. At the time of the purchase, the D&H had little
Quite a few transformers came out of the GE Pittsfield, Mass. plant. I did some in HO:
IMG_9723_fix_web by Edmund, on Flickr
Don’t forget a sign. Most manufacturers were proud of their work and liked to take credit. While not directly served by the D&H it was close enough that interchange would have been likely.
The U.S. Navy had a large arsenal in Watervleit, NY served by the D&H and I’m sure some gun barrels and carriages were shipped in/out in open-top cars.
Watervliet_Iron by Edmund, on Flickr
Other ideas here:
https://multiscale.digital/collections/n-1-160
Good Luck, Ed
Steel products, wide plate on the flatcar, narrow plate, structural steel shapes, pipe in the gon would be universal loads that any gon or flat could haul.
Also in the gon could be scrap metal.
The area was known for its Granite and Marble so a flat or gondola with large slabs of rock would look pretty cool.
Ray
Hello All,
In addition to all the great suggestions- -for me- -flatcars equal Maintenance Of Way (MOW) equipment…
Things like traditional heavy equipment: backhoes, bulldozers, and cranes come to mind for flatcar loads.
Sea containers converted for tool storage or MOW crew transport can also be secured to flatcars.
My pike is based on coal mining operations on the Western Slope of Colorado between 1970 and 1980.
Flatcars deliver many types of machinery to service the mine:
- Complete dump trucks, replacement beds, and tires
- Ventilation equipment; air handling fans and piping
- Electrical generation and management equipment
- Pumps, to keep the mines free of water
- Parts for tunnel boring machine (TBM)
- Wire rope and conveyor belt material
- Excavation buckets for cranes
- Electric mine locomotives
- Cable reels for hoists
- Rock crushing units
- Air compressors
Many of these loads arrive on cars from the manufacturers’ home roads.
This allows me to “justify” foreign reporting marks on my freelance pike.
Items arrive crated or on pallets, while some are tarped.
Removable wooden frames can be used to replicate chocks.
Any tie-downs; chains or cables, can be attached to the pallets or frames to keep the loads self-contained.
As far as the gondola goes, pipe and steel loads are a great choice and can be modeled to “lift out” along with scrap loads of various types.
To secure loads, without permanently attaching them, you can put small guide pins on the bottom of the loads and drill small holes in the floors of the cars.
If the mounting holes are uniform, you can swap out varrious loads on the same cars(s).
Hope this helps.
The D&H moved ingot molds in gons from Bethlehem to Bufallo on their and LV lines. Both roads had a number of gons specified for this service.
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Rick Jesionowski
That pretty much takes care of outbound loads but there are also inbound loads probably on or in foreign road cars. Massive I beams and girders from Bethlehem steel for bridges and building construction. New equipment and raw materials for existing businesses. Newsprint for the newspapers. Refrigerator cars full if lobsters. Etc.
Yeah, we used to get shipments of ingot moulds in gondolas at the steel plant where I worked. I wish, though, that Rix would make some larger moulds, with the lifting lugs on the wide-face sides of the mould.
The ingots which we rolled were anywhere between 10 and 25 tons, mostly top pours, but we did occasionally get bottom pours for some specialized grades of steel. In those days, our mill alone was doing over three million tons a year.
For scrap loads, I use all sorts of stuff…
Hello All,
I always liked the punched-out disk load.
Hope this help.