I just picked up a set of six MDC bathtub gondolas on Ebay the other day and would like to make scrap metal loads for them. Does anyone have any suggestions on what materials and techniques work best?[:D]
I can’t remember the thread for the life of me (it may have been last week’s WPF thread), but AggroJones had some cars with some really nice “home grown” scrap metal loads using old sprue and various other parts from the work bench. Maybe somebody can help out with further info here???
Here is a couple of links that might be helpful:
All of the loads shown are “loose”: that is, not glued together nor glued into the car.
Wayne
Those are some nice scratchbuilt loads, Dr. Wayne. Boomer, it’s really easy to look in the scrapbox and find things that you can weather into a nice gondoloa load. If you don’t want to take the time to do that, Walther’s has some gondola loads on sale right now.
Get some old alarm clocks and gut them for the gears and whatever else. They can be rusted up and used as scrap loads.
I have to agree with Jeffrey here, with the exception that I use the gears and such from old printers and such. Paint them a gray color to represent the natural color, then weather and rust them up a bit and put them in your gon. I do not even glue them in, I might want to change the load someday. I also have a gon that I have filled with steel wole (sp) painted rust and use lots of glue/water mix to keep the steel in the gon and off the tracks and out of the locos. Makes a good looking scrap wire load. Mike
I cut up rusty tin cans I find while out railfaning and waiting for a train to show up. See MR article October 2006
These are my scrap loads, removeable.
Wolfgang
I think you are on to something, Wolfgang. Very realistic, and nicely executed. [:)]
Here’s how I made my crushed car loads:
I used some tin foil, folded it into rectangles, then tied a few together with thread, and weathered with thinned brown paint. Then I loaded up a gon and sent it to Kimball Recycling Co. to be melted into steel coils.
On a side note , should the trall high side gondolas have 33" or 36" wheels. I assume they ran on 100T trucks and thus should have the 36" wheel sets.
Hi Gang,
I found a guy selling “junk” for gondola loads on Ebay and developed a process to make removeable scrap loads, using his product. Go to http://www.johnnysjunkheap.com/ At the bottom of his home page, click on “Removeable Loads” where he has photos I sent him and instructions for creating the loads. I really like his junk because it is NOT rusty metal. He paints his plastic “junk” to look like rusty metal.
Hope this helps.
Mondo
Spray aluminum foil with several colors of spray paint. Put the foil and water to cover in and OLD (heavy on the old) blender. Blend until chopped up. Strain the foil shreds. Let dry. Glut to foam or balsa pieces that fit in the cars. Give a slight overspray of rust colored paint. Soak steel wool in vineger. Dribble the fluid (NO solids) over the scrap piles. Let dry.
Cut bits of sprue up, cut up pieces of old kits, old engine shells, old model airplanes, old model tanks and ships and glue to foam or balsa supports.Spray with rust and earth colors. You can also use pieces of pasta broken up.
After you get done replacing all your plastic wheels with metal ones, take the plastic wheels and remove the axles, paint them rust color and use the old plastic wheels as a scrap load (or neatly stack them with wooden bracing for NEW wheels for a gon load).
Go to a junk yard (or your driveway ) and find a car with body cancer, scrape the rust bits off into a container and mix with a junk load.
Dave H.
You read my mind, that is exactly the idea I had! Now I just need to find a cheap blender, off to the pawn shop![:D] Maybe I can find some old alarm clocks to tear apart while I’m there. Thanks for all the tips and also the great photos!
What’s the capacity stecilled on the side of the car? Add that to the car’s empty weight, divide by 2, and that’s the weight per truck. Assuming a 200,000 pound capacity, and an empty weight of 80,000 pounds, that adds up to 280,000 pounds, or 140 tons. It would need at least 70 ton trucks. 33" wheels would be fine in this case.
The real car may ride on 100 ton trucks, or 36" wheels anyway, for any number of reasons. You would have to do some prototype research to find out for sure. I read in MR somewhere that 36" and 38" (usually 125 ton trucks) wheels supposedly help spread the weight over the rail (they were used on specific 100 ton covered hoppers, which normally might ride on 33" wheels).
Brad
Don’t forget that if you change your wheel size (will anyone notice?) you will also change the ride height of the car. Okay this will be by half the diference… which isn’t much… but will anyone notice?
One issue to bear in mind. Steel scrap tends to be heavy. Most times I see pics of it in ordinary 50 or 60 foot gons. It does get to ride in (usually tatty/older) High Sides… but this may be more likely to be the awkward chunks of stuff that would be more expensive to cut/breal up. I don’t know the weights but I would guess that bales of scrap and/or cars made into solid blocks would make a full load by weight for an ordinary gon and so only fill the bottom of a High side.
You might get a few extra solid lumps into a high side but then there could be an issue of them shifting around if they were not secured somehow. So maybe they would be left out or blocked in with (probably messy/old) timber or split ties.
From the modelling point of view I would think tht a high side is even more of a candidate for mking the load as some sort of removable plug. People have posted lots of ways to do that here.
Subject to some idea of the total weight one “nice” scrap load for a high side might be hacked up lumps of boxcar - bits of sides, ends, roof panels and doors. These could be slotted in on edge. They would have any recyclable bits (like brake fittings) removed - partly to make them flatter and less likely to jam together. They would have to be wedged to not bang about (side to side… there’s going to be a chunk of weight there… and so that people can get them out at the other end.
I’ve left car floors/frames out of the above list as the lumps would be more massive and heavier… so they would be cut smaller and go in an ordinary gon, assuming one were available.
Empty drums and squashed drums would make a good load in which there is a lot of air. One place I work we squash non-con
Recently I have seen scrap moving in old rotary type gons, like old style coal cars.
Dave H.
That’s a nice looking car and load.
If you’ll forgive my saying so… I’d batter the top drums down more flat. I was amazed by what a low speed was needed to life an old style metal trash can out of my trailer. the lady driving behind me was a touch surprised too [#oops]
Do they (or did they) put nets over loose loads in the US? If they did it would look good/evehn better.
[8D]
Hang on, aren’t the bathtub gons for coal? I’m thinking of the CP ones. Or are they different ones?