Making ore car loads for extra weight--photo examples

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
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Perhaps a way people can learn from my mistakes and successes rather than reinvent the wheel. In this project I had both.

Can’t claim this is my idea. I had a response ages ago wherein someone told of creating removeable gondola weights inside plastic wrap. There may be some magazine article on this too.

I needed to add weight to this set of 10 ore cars I picked up on Ebay (the axles were in horribly rusted shape…had to add new wheel sets to half the cars)

Anyway, thought I would give the glue process a try and use things I had on hand…a lot of left over WS coarse buff rock to use. I needed about 1.5 oz in each car. So I didn’t need to fill them up. Nor did I want to, in case the bottomed out load did not fit back in because of exapansion or something.

So I used sections of carboard roll to create a false bottom. Cut out triangles thinking I needed to create a drop at the end of each pile.

Measured some of the WS rock. It is quite light.

I used a 50-50 mixture of white glue with a little alcohol. The load is quite thick and even thinned glue would not reach down to the bottom. So I first used glue on the first 2/3 of the load which was about level with the sides. Then topped up the load and added more glue.

A little spray from the air duster to drive the glue further down quickly.

Then I set the loads out in the cars to dry. Well, here some problems began. The tops dried quite well, but I discovered the bottoms were completely wet after

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Nice job cisco

I did the same for my hopper fleet hauling gravel. I cut a false floor from styrene and painted it a sand color then set them on wax paper and painted white glue on them and sprinkled the rocks on. Then with a spoon I heeped up the gravel in the center and sprayed wet water and 50/50 glue/water. Let dry a couple days and instant loads.

Just one more thing. Ore and gravel are heavy comodities and will sit further down inside the hoppers. Resist the temptation to heap the loads high.

Pete

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Ahhhh…thanks, Pete. That is just the sort of feedback I was hoping to get before the next job like this. It’s good to get a tip on the realism.

I was also afraid the colour of the load looked like nothing but the gravel of the scenery around my layout…which would have been ok. But I like the notion that it resembles uranium ore with the touch of black on yellow. Seems to match the photos I have seen anyway.

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Dang, they look kinda like “granolie” bars… Hmmm…

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[dinner]

Yeah, they sure did look that way from the bottom. What improved the tops is that I added a dusting top layer of fine WS buff rock which is more angular. I never would have used the experimental loads if the tops looked like the bottom.

This one needs to be pushed down in a bit further. I can still see the edges.