Easy Coal Load

[kasskaboose]

7j43k

And, without the black paint, gravel!  But you can't load gravel that high in a car.

What I like about this idea, aside from a simple load, is that all my loads can look the same.  When a load comes supplied with a car, it rarely matches visually with the supplied load in the adjacent car if a different company made it.

Ed

 

 

Do coal loads look exactly the same in real life?  I make my loads in a similar fashion and it looks quite good.  I also glue some fine coal to the foam.  Simple and easy solutions are often the ones that look the most realistic.

[dknelson]

A good friend of mine has "active" loads on his layout, meaning loads are actually removed or added from flatcars, hoppers, and gondolas in his staging yard.  While he has used real crushed coal for his hoppers, that is potentially messy for the layout and the operator so he confines that to "loose car" hoppers.  For his coal unit train, he took foam rubber, cut it to size for his identical coal hoppers (well, coal gons actually but you know what I mean) and spray painted it black. It is easy to remove with a pick, can be jammed into a box, and easy to "load."  Plus the density of the foam rubber texture actually resembles the rather powdery size of actual coal used by power plants in recent years.

Dave Nelson

[xdford]

Thanks everyone here for sharing their input... some excellent points and modifications to a good idea,

Cheers

Trevor

 

 

[cowman]

Good idea.  I have some Life Like coal that I  have used on loads, also some black sand from a craft store, a little finer than the LL coal.

If you glue a steel washer in the center, just under the coal, you can use a magnetic pick up tool to easily remove the loads.  I have a piece of cloth, attached with a rubber band, over the magnetic head to minimize damage to the load.

Thanks for sharing,

Richard

[MisterBeasley]

"Cinders" ballast is already black.

[7j43k]

And, without the black paint, gravel!  But you can't load gravel that high in a car.

What I like about this idea, aside from a simple load, is that all my loads can look the same.  When a load comes supplied with a car, it rarely matches visually with the supplied load in the adjacent car if a different company made it.

Ed

[Guy Papillon]

A piece of foam core...

Some ballast...

And an heavy coat of flat black in spray can...

I just hope I had had some coarse ballast available.