I had six pulpwood bulkhead cars with nothing to put on them. Rather than do nothing, I thought I would adapt them to packaged lumber.
I had one Walthers Weyerhauser plastic model load for 70 foot cars so I scanned it at high resolution and then printed sheets on inkjet paper and mounted them on the heaviest weight poster board with 3M spray glue..
The main problem was the thickness of the board, which cause rounded edges when bent. I couldn't score on the correct side for bending as it had the glued picture on it, so I scored the underside and "routered" out a little channel with an exacto. It didn't come out too badly, althought for purists, the load is cut a little short and is perhaps on the wrong type of car, but I think it will do for a while and I spent only $4 for the posterboard. I think a set of six Walthers loads would set me back at least $40. I'll get them later.
The paper was too bright, so I rubbed them with Bragdon ash-coloured powder.
~G4
19 Years old, modeling the Cowlitz, Chehalis, and Cascade Railroad of Western Washington in 1927 in 6X6 feet.
Those look great. Good idea!
Very nice work! Foamcore is also a very versatile product to use in building a structural shell for a number of projects.
I wound up making my own lumber loads after visiting a vendor's table at a swapmeet years ago, and noticing the package contained a block of wood cut to fit a Thrall centerbeam car, a printed sheet of lumber packaging material, and some heavy thread for strapping. I thought; "I can do that"..., so I decided to create my own.
First, I used some soft pine cut to size for fitting the length & width of the car side. Using a photograph as a reference, I also noted that most cars are loaded only four courses high to prevent shifting the center of gravity.
Secondly, using my savvy computer skils, I used MS Word, and setup a table of four rows & 'x' columns measured to the size of the piece of wood. Once I set my rows evenly spaced to fit the height needed, I offset the the columns in each row to simulate random stacking. I set the cell border color to a medium grey to denote the individual packages of lumber.
Next, I inserted my chosen brand markings as an image to be easily scaled down to fit inside the table cell. I then copied the image into the remaining cells.
Finally, I added vertical banding and corner protectors to the lumber paper layout using the graphics utility portion of MS Word, so that these items could be moved and 'floated' over the top of the table cells.
Note: Pay close attention to the spacing of the tie-down lugs on the railcar for reference. Be sure to extend the strapping beyond the design so it can be wrapped around and hidden behind the blind side of the wood block when assembled with glue.
Lastly, I grouped the whole design layout together, and copied it to another part of the same page, and printed it out.
Here's a photo of it completed on my HO scale module. Have fun & enjoy!