Making coal loads

[Medina1128]

I just picked up some coal hoppers on eBay with coal loads already installed. The third one didn't, though, so I thought I'd make one based on some tips I've learned here.

• I cut a piece of styrene to fit and reinforced it with 1/8" square styrene.
• I pushed a piece of plastic wrap into the car, then put the styrene in, about 3/16" below the top of the hopper sides.
• I didn't have any coal, so I built it up with sand from a sand tube. I picked out the bigger pieces (small stones).
• Then, sprayed it with wet water, making sure the load was completely soaked. I applied diluted white glue in the same manner I do with ballast, scenery, etc., making sure to saturate the higher parts of the load.
• Once it's dry, I'll weigh the car, remove the load and glue in some weight. This hopper looks like one from the Walthers Trainline series, which I've noticed all tend to be underweight. This car also has removable inner sloped sides, which will allow me to conceal the weight.

When it's completely dry, I'll spray it with primer, then with flat black paint. Once done, I'll post the pics.

[BroadwayLion]

Go to a store specializing in masonry and welding sorts of things and look at the sand blasting materials.

I suppose you can glue a heap of them in your hopper, the LION simply filled his hopper with the stuff which works fine, just do not derail your train.

 

[Lake]

What I have used is the charcoal from used water filters ground very fine in my layouts bean grinder. The bean grinder is one of the best purchases I have made. 

There are some round yellowish balls in it but they disperse into the black charcoal when ground. You can make it as fine or course as you want with the grinder, works on soil and ballast too. I attach it the same as I do ballast.

 

[doctorwayne]

Like the Lion, I prefer loose loads, and use what I believe may be "Black Beauty" blasting medium, although mine was obtained from the sand tower for the locos at the steel plant where I worked:

I think that it nicely simulates Anthracite, which is useful for the four coal dealerships currently on the layout (with another two or three planned).

For my locos, I use coke breeze (very fine industrial coke) and have created open coal bunkers in all tenders, allowing for full, partial, or almost empty loads.  Some of it is also shipped to the coal dealers.

 

Wayne

[Medina1128]

Well, here are the pics.

Underside of load. Reinforced styrene. I put a piece of Saran wrap inside the hopper, then inserted the load base into the car.

I used sand to make the load, because that's what I had on hand. It's glued with diluted white glue.

Completed car.

As a side note, this car was severely underweight, but it has removable inserts. I used a fishing weight, flattened with a hammer that fit under the insert. The only thing I changed were the wheels; replacing the plastic ones with metal ones.

[Jumijo]

That is some funky coal, Medina.

[Medina1128]

Jumijo

That is some funky coal, Medina.

Hahaha.. that was too easy, wasn't it?

[cedarwoodron]

I appreciate the advice of some who advocate for sandblasting materials as being very realistic in scale as coal loads; however, there is an inexpensive and local alternative. I found a florist coarse black granule material at Michael's Crafts Stores that cost me only $3-$4, and looks amazingly like- you guessed it, real coal! At first, I started looking at aquarium materials, but they were larger and far more coarse than HO scale required. At Michael's, there also were craft sands in various colors, among them a black fine sand, but here the reverse problem (for HO) was the very small granular size. It may be more suitable for N gauge use. At any rate, the stuff I found is labeled " Decorative Sand ", item no. 73054, black coarse sand, made by Panacea Products Corp., Columbus OH (made in China) and found in the center aisles floral decoration area of Michael's (assuming the same store layout plan as the one I live near). It comes in a 2 lb plastic bag. I have used it for the coal bucket on the Walthers Cinder Conveyor and Ashpit kit, as well as two or three coal loads (built on top of foam inserts) in small coal hoppers. A very frugal solution, indeed! Cedarwoodron

[dstarr]

This coal load is HO scale coal from the hobby shop glued to a white pine "core".  I cut the pine to just fit the car hopper opening with my radial arm saw, and then shape it into a coal mound look with hand tools, a block plane, a file, and sand paper.   The coal is secured with white glue.

[fwright]

dstarr

This coal load is HO scale coal from the hobby shop glued to a white pine "core"....

 

David

That is definitely one of the more realistic looking coal loads I have seen.  One of the big surprises (to me) in a recent Shorpy photo I studied was the size of the coal pieces in the tender.  Before the days of mechanical stokers, many railroads would use the cheapest coal they could get - unwashed, unsized, ungraded.  This would result in quite large coal chunks with dirt and even small rocks embedded.  Larger pieces were usually favored because they could be put on the grate as desired, and not fall through or be sucked into the tubes by the draft.  Some railroad coal loaders had more than one bin to allow firemen to mix some better grades of coal with the junk so they fire the boiler more easily in critical situations.

Contrast with today's coal trains that run by me on the Denver-Pueblo Front Range line.  The coal is very uniform and small in size for very even firing of the power plants.

just my thoughts and experiences

Fred W

[BroadwayLion]

"The coal is very uniform and small in size for very even firing of the power plants."

Actually, I am certain that they do not fire these lumps, but rather pulverize them into dust and blow it into the maw so that it burns instantly, much like oil.

(My "facts" come with a money back guarantee--you get what you pay for)

[Medina1128]

BroadwayLion

"The coal is very uniform and small in size for very even firing of the power plants."

Actually, I am certain that they do not fire these lumps, but rather pulverize them into dust and blow it into the maw so that it burns instantly, much like oil.

(My "facts" come with a money back guarantee--you get what you pay for)

One of my neighbors works at a coal fired power plant, and you're right. I've watched him dump coal trains, and for the most part, the coal IS pretty uniform in size. At the bottom of the coal dump is a grate, which leads to a conveyor. When they need to fill the coal bunkers, it gets pulverized into dust, then blown into the furnaces.