Tender coal loads

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I have seen it floating around in various model railroading magazines that you can use real coal for realistic tender coal loads. I have been wanting to try it, but I have some questions I would like to have answered before I go any further with a possible project

  1. Can Bar-B-Q charcoal (like Kingsford self-light or regular) work?

  2. If I use Kingsford self-light, and if a DCC decoder component explodes (very likely with my poor electrical skills) can the load ignite? I’d rather not have a very prized (and very expensive) steam licomotive burst into flames.

  3. How do I go about installing the coal load?

  4. What type of adhesives are best?

I hope I could get the answer. Those shiny, plastic coal loads in the steam locomotives at my local hobby shop are screaming “Buy Us and Make Us Better!”

2

Forget the Kingsford any one of the better train shops will carry real scale coal. and it will look much better. To install it simply take a small brush and put a thin layer of Elmers glue on the existing plastic tender coal load , sprinkle on the coal ,follow this up by mixing a small amount Elmers glue the white kind not the yellow carpenter glue with water in a very small dish and add a drop or two of dish soap to break the water tension apply this to the coal load with a eye dropper and let it dry over night after its throughly dry shake out any loose coal and thats it it you do have a spot you missed just reapplywere needed.

3

I’ll agree with the advise to forget the self lighting charcoal, mainly because it is soaked with a lighter fluid and is more easily set on fire. Besides, charcoal is going to give you more of a dust problem than real coal.

Depending on how detailed you want to get and how ambitious you feel, you can also model a partial load. A tender will only be full to the brim as it leaves the terminal for a day’s work, most of them will have a partial load. I have a couple locomotives that have a partial load modelled. First you need to cut out the cast plastic coal, then, if you have any electronics in the tender make sure your new floor will clear them when you build a coal bin out of styrene. Simply make the floor higher than the actual coal bin floor in the tender. The rear and side slope sheets should be close, especially if you plan to let part of them show over the top of the remaining coal. Paint the tender body. Sprinkle in some crushed coal and I’ve used white glue to hold it in place.

4

I pay to see that! [:D]

Woodland sells a pretty decent fake coal. I did some coal hoppers with it. I have all so used some black ballast. It is better than the plastic load my Bachmann coal cars came with, but not as good as the other loads I made.

Here a picture of cars with the ballast.

Cuda Ken

5

Stay away from the charcoal. It is not coal at all but burnt wood products. Coal is a mineral from the ground. I have used real coal smashed with a hammer and glued similar to the way ballast is glued. Lately I have been using Black Beauty. It is a sand blasting media made from crushed and washed slag. You can get it from places that do sand blasting. You can probably grab a coffee can full if you ask nice instead of buying a fifty pound bag. It comes in different grades or sizes. This comes in handy for the different grades of coal loads to finish off all those empty hoppers too.

Pete

6

I would stay far away from the self-igniting charcoal more because of the potential for the self-igniting chemicals to possibly attack the plastic(?) of the tender than anything else. I would note, however, that regular charcoal, when well crushed, is excellent for representing culm, the coal waste product often used to fire camelback locomotives. I know a number of camelback modelers who employ it on their models.

On the other hand, as others have already indicated, to represent regular coal, one or another of the commercially available coal-like products would be a better choice than charcoal.

CNJ831

7

For some reason, I just never liked the look of real coal for a load. There are many that look quite convincing, however it just doesn’t seem to really scale that well from my perception. Maybe just to flat and irregular.

I have found that sandblasting grit “Black Beauty” looks great to me. Actually a past club member, Fantastic w/ castings of Hydrocal and resin, uses this or something comprable on his production loads.

These are Motrak Models loads. (I believe that a link to Motrak may be Ebay and you would need to search,I won’t post) Nice stuff for those interested. You can make your own by using a plaster, resin or foam shaped base, paint black then glue on the coal. WS coal looks fine and is easily obtained. remember that there are prototypical shapes to the method of loading ( era, type of loader and as a tender the amount shown as just filled or any look as it is taken by use from the auger.

Coal hopper loads will settle out and those peaks will round off from bouncing down the rails. Pics will help to decide what presentation you want for your load.

I remember a while back someone had posted pics of tenders with various stages of coal use even down to actually showing an added auger in the tender.

8

[quote user=“the North East Rail Modeler”]

I have seen it floating around in various model railroading magazines that you can use real coal for realistic tender coal loads. I have been wanting to try it, but I have some questions I would like to have answered before I go any further with a possible project

  1. Can Bar-B-Q charcoal (like Kingsford self-light or regular) work? A nice pyrotechnics show is not a good thing for your model railroad stay away form anything that can burn

  2. If I use Kingsford self-light, and if a DCC decoder component explodes (very likely with my poor electrical skills) can the load ignite? I’d rather not have a very prized (and very expensive) steam licomotive burst into flames.

  3. How do I go about installing the coal load? I have used Howard Zane’s method of tender coal loads many times over with excellent results on tenders without the plastic coal loads I use modeling clay and shape it into a mound resembling the coal load pile. I glue that into the tender with some adhesive lately I have been using silicone caulking works great and goes a long way. I then sprinkle on either real crushed coal or the stuff you buy from woodland scenic etc. or even heavy coarse ballast. If you spill it on the tender deck or step plates thats ok ans this used to always happen when they loaded tenders

  4. What type of adhesives are best? I then hit it with some 70% Isopropyl alcohol as a wetting agent and then just wet it down with a mix of 50/50 of white glue and water. Just like ballasting track.

I hope I could get the answer. Those shiny, plastic coal loads in the steam locomotives at my local hobby shop are screaming “Buy Us and Make Us Better!” I have done this to every steam locomotive in my roster, from the cheapest one to the most expensive and it definitely makes them look much better then when they come out

9

I use “live” coal loads in both hoppers and loco tenders.

For Anthracite, I use locomotive traction grit (which I think may be very similar to Black Beauty) that I found at work:

And for soft coal, I like coke breeze (the “fines” from industrial coke-making):

It’s easy to model a full tender:

…or one not-so-full:

Wayne

10

I did all my coal hoppers with anthracite ( Woodland Scenics ) but never thought about the tenders -especially about them always being full

Something else for future projects

11

UncBob,

That looks good. Is that a full load or just a thin layer on some sort of base?

I have 16 ore cars that I need to “fill” and not sure how to do it.

Rich

12

I cut and sanded 1/4 plywood to fit
Then spread white glue over the surface and used a teaspoon to dump the coal on it
Then brushed off the excess and spot filled any holes

For my ore cars I did the same thing but then I sprayed the coal a rust color

13

Like some of the other guys, I’ve used Black Beauty sandblasting grit for locomotive coal, hopper loads and track ballast. One suggestion I’d make is to sift it with a flour sifter before you use it. That will separate it into two “grades”. The coarser grade that didn’t pass through the mesh is best for locomotive tenders while the finer stuff is good for ballast and/or hopper loads depicting “nut” coal or finer.

14

With all of my steamer fleet - nine in total - I removed the factory fitted plastic coal panel and replaced this with real coal bought from a model shop. I still cling to DC so I can do this without compromising DCC and sound gear. Removing the factory fitted plastic coal panel with its unrealistic appearence has allowed me to detail steamers with bunkers of varying levels of coal. Some are near empty, others half full and some, starting out on their journey - are full. No two coal bunkers have the same level of coal in them. From illustrations of model steam locomotives in magazines many modelers seem to take this approach also.

Bruce[:)]

15

You must work for the railroad don’t you? or do you work with the railroad?

As I can see, from the responses, the use of Kingsford is apparently a big no-no, especially with the Self-light stuff.

With the sand-blasting grit, I’ll have to check-in to that. There’s really no place in the hobby desert (aka, North Florida) to get hobby supplies,except for 1-2 family-owned hobby shopps (all of the employees know me by sight, and by name) and, when I find something that isn’t (originally) hobby-related, but can still be used, it’s garunteed that it won’t be found. (Take, for example, Sedum, as mentioned a few months ago in the Model Railroader for good realistic trees. I have been searching everywhere, and none of the plant stores or hardware stores have them in-stock) Well, I guess it’s possible to go and snag about 10-cups or so of “Black Beauty” grit from the local welding company.

If I do find a place that sells the stuff in bulk 50-lb bags, I may pick one of them up. Don’t worry, my friend and I share everything for the hobby, including my magazine-library, and we plan to (eventually) start our own club (and buisness) with our other friends (if we can convince them to join) so, no matter how much “bulk” we buy, it’ll go dry soon enough.

P.S. Kuda Ken, I know you would pay to see me use the Kingsford ready-light, and my poor electrical skills, to have real soot fall on the train, but I must disappoint you. I just checked, and we used the full stock my family had a long time ago.[swg] I do plan on using charcoal for a G-scale live steam locomotive, as possibly seen on the Garden Railways forums, so, if you whish, you could search for it and see what I plan to do.

P.S.S. I also saw it once or twice, about modeling a coal bunker (i

16

Actually, I worked at a steel plant, but they had their own, rather extensive, railway system. That was also my source for coke breeze.

I always remove the cast coal loads from my tenders and add a representation of the coal bunker. However, since I use loose “coal”, I don’t model the stoker screw: several of the brass steamers which I painted for a friend were equipped with stoker augers (non-working) and, as the loco ran, the loose coal managed to work its way along until it dropped out of the open front end of the stoker trough, falling onto the ballast.

The part of the stoker in the tender is basically a screw, turning in a trough beneath the bunker. Here’s a [url=http://www.google.ca/images?q=locomotive+stoke