I’ve recently been looking at various pulpwood and bulkhead flat cars to haul lumber and lumber products. I came across the Walthers 63’ Pulpwood Flat Car and was wondering whether this car would be appropriate for an early 1970’s era layout? Also, is the deck on this pulpwood flat car sloped in a V-shape towards the centre of the car like most prototype pulpwood flat cars? Was the lumber and paper industry still strong in the appalachian mountains back in the early 1970’s?
The Walthers 63’ pulpwod car is based on a Canadian Pacific prototype built in 1970. CP is the only road that this car is 100% accurate for; all others are stand-ins for prototypes that are similar but may have certain design and detail differences.
http://freight.railfan.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=cp304864&o=cprail
The floor on these cars is flat, not V-decked. V-decked flatcars were designed to carry pulpwood cut in 4’ lengths, in two rows on the car, with the V-deck sloping the two piles against each other.
Modern pulpwood cars handle pulpwood in 8’ logs, lengthwise in the car. The side stakes are specifically spaced to hold piles of 8’ logs.
In Canada, pretty most pulpwood has been shipped in 8’ lengths, either on side-stake cars like this model, or on regular 52’ bulkhead flatcars or gondolas, since well before the 1970s. I’ve seen steam era photos from northern Ontario showing long cuts of gondolas loaded with 8’ logs.
I don’t know what was standard practice in the Appalachians during the 1970s, if they still shipped 4’ logs on V-deck cars or 8’ logs on side-stake or regular cars.
So yes, the Walthers model in general is appropriate for the 1970s, but I don’t know anything about the SOU car in particular, other than that it is a stand-in, or the practices for your AREA. The simplified lettering on the SOU car pictured does look probably more modern than the 1970s - the 3-panel COTS area (black square near right side) is definately a modern 1980s+ style (but that’s easily fixable with decals, IF the car and the rest of the lettering is actually 1970s appropriate).
Thanks for the info. I had no idea that the car was actually just a Canadian specific prototype. Seems like some manufacturers still cut prototype corners. The car would probably be a stand in for a more prototypically accurate car. Since I consider it good enough, I’ll use the stand-ins unless something that’s the actual car becomes available. Does anyone even make a load for these cars?
Nope. But you can make one by cutting real branches into scale 8’ logs. It can be tedious, but on the plus side it’ll look more realistic than any painted plastic or resin load anyway.
This load is a cast resin kit made by Walthers a few years back that I painted, it looks better on the layout than it does in close up.
Actually, the CP cars were set up for longitudinal loading of 15 foot logs. There would be four sets of 15 foot bundles per car. The side stakes wouldn’t be much good for holding in 8 (or 10) foot logs laying crossways.
Jurgen
www.wrmrc.ca
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Jurgen, this type of car with side stakes are absolutely used for transporting 8’ logs.
This example which I posted further up shows exactly that:
http://freight.railfan.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=cp304864&o=cprail
There are 7 rows of logs, and the inside length of the car is just a shade over 60’ feet, so they’re less than 10’ long. The pairs of stakes are perfectly spaced to contain logs of this size. I never said anything about cross-ways loading.
8’ logs are the standard that other side stake cars like this are designed around:
These CN cars are a bit shorter at 52’:
http://canadianfreightcargallery.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=cn615027&o=cn