Needed: Technical Info on Thrall 65ft Mill Gondola

Model Railroader Prototype information for the modeler
1

Hi all,

A local friend of mine has commissioned me to paint an undec Walthers HO scale 65’ Mill Gondola in a fantasy roadname. Even if the road itself never existed, I still want all the technical data (load limit, built-date, etc.) to accurately reflect what you’d see on any prototype Thrall 65-footer.

I’ve tried Googling for the info, but all I usually got was some random roster sites, plus PAGES AND PAGES of model train hits. When I filtered out the words "model, Walthers, Athearn, scale, HO, RTR, eBay etc., I barely got anything. Obviously I’m not entering the optimum combination of search words. [Stein, can you work your Google “magic” once again…?[;)] ]

If any of you could point me the right direction, I’d greatly appreciate it!

2

Ken,Just use decals for a 65 foot mill gon that should give you the correct data.

3

Larry - I went to the Microscale web site, but their search engine only returned decals for 50-footers (actually 52’ cars but that’s what MS calls them). Great idea in theory at least…!

Here is a link to a PDF I found that describes BNSF 66ft mill gons.

http://www.bnsftransload.com/tools/equipment/pdf/Gondolas.pdf

There’s quite a bit of useful info there. These gons were built in 1996, but my client’s target era is 1973-83; were 211000-lb capacity gondolas being built back in those days?

4

There’s a similiar data sheet on the manfacturer’s website (Trinity rail car, which brought out Thrall around the turn of the century). I was going to post it last night, but upon reviewing the Walthers Mill gondola and this one, they seem to be significantly different (for one, note the ‘fish belly’ bottom on the older gondola vs the straight-bottom on the newer one), so I didn’t bother.

5

Thanks CH, that car’s numbers look quite similar to the BNSF one I linked to.

What would really be helpful is if somebody who already owns a factory-painted Walthers 65-footer model were to snap a close-up view of the Load Limit, Light Weight and Build Date and post the image here. Then I’d just make decals of my own based on that…

6

I don’t have any of these in the painted version, but my file folder on these models says that they’re:

DRGW 30800-30824 & 31000-31024; MILW 93800-93849; CNW 137200-137395

You might get some info from photos of these cars in the various freight car photo repositories.

Ed

7

Ed,

Thanks for those lists - some closeups of the CNW gons on rrpicturearchives.net gave me exactly the type of load limit and light weight info I was looking for!