Got yet another one for my Forum friends. Anybody got a good link/picture ofa flat car carrying rail from the 70s era? I bought a flat car equipped for that purpose but it needs some work as the way is was done wasn't very good. This is for joined (section) rail. Thank you for any assistance that can be provided.
What make of car is it and, why is it inadequate for your intended purpose? During the 1970s, most stick (39 foot lengths of) rail was shipped from the mills when new, in gondolas. Railroads usually parcelled it out to work sites on flat cars with wooden low side stakes and homemade bulkheads. I believe you take your modeling cues from the Northern Pacific, therefore you might want one of the flatcar kits offered by Central Valley Model Works (www.cvmw.com). It is an older design, 41 foot flatcar with deep! sidesills based on a car originally built by the NP. according to their (CV's) website, it costs under $14.00. NP also had a lot of older looking, straight sidesill flats of various lengths and, most equipment in maintenance service, started out in freight service.
NHTX I believe you take your modeling cues from the Northern Pacific,
I believe you take your modeling cues from the Northern Pacific,
While my main influence is NP I also have contributions from all the roads that contributed to the BN. (GN, "Q", SP&S, FW&D, etc.) Among my other projects is making 4 Athearn 40' into FWD boxcars and 4 Accurail composite hoppers to CBQ ones for sugar beets operations.
NHTX What make of car is it and, why is it inadequate for your intended purpose?
What make of car is it and, why is it inadequate for your intended purpose?
As to the model itself, it is like this (http://www.ebay.com/itm/393912697365?epid=671692772&hash=item5bb706c215:g:ixYAAOSwBqhh5XVG) except it doesn't have the coils. It also has a double stack of rail 8 sticks wide by nearly the whole length of the car with 4 cross lengths of rail at reasonable intervals.
I'm planning to repaint the car to Forest Railway's maintance scheme (Green with black roman lettering) and "weather" the wood deck. I'm also going to replace the plug trucks with some better trucks from an Accurail car that will be canabalized for parts to fix one of the already mentioned hoppers and body mount the couplers. (Kadee 140 series as appropriate.)
What makes the car inadequate, at least to me, is that some of the strapping detail isn't as in scale as I would like it. I'm one of the people that will fix a boxcar that has a sawtooth sill when it should be a solid sill and completely reletter a car when the lettering is the wrong font.
NHTX Railroads usually parcelled it out to work sites on flat cars with wooden low side stakes and homemade bulkheads.
Railroads usually parcelled it out to work sites on flat cars with wooden low side stakes and homemade bulkheads.
I have enough styrene that I may use that idea and bash something based on that idea.
Finding a picture of a car like that is going to be tough because that's not normally how railroad ship rail (gons).
You can find pictures of DRGW flat with rail on them but I think they are most storage (due to the rust and NOTHING being secured on the deck).
This website has a picture of something close.
Non-Revenue — Missabe Railroad Historical Society
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
dehusman This website has a picture of something close. Non-Revenue — Missabe Railroad Historical Society
That site has a car on it that gives me a few ideas on how to proceed.
That's a Tyco flatcar car, probably 48' 6" in overall length. First thing I would do is clear off that deck. Nobody loads cable reels, even empty ones like that. With a clear deck, thought might be given to opening up the stake pockets at each pocket, for a more prototypical appearance. Before you go any further, please go to the following website: www.rr-fallenflags.org and scroll down to the Southern Pacific section. Second from the last car in the SPMW listings, you will see SP 564106, an SP general service flatcar comandeered for MOW use. Notice the low side and end boards retaining all of the junk MOW forces have piled aboard it. This is the type of car ordinarilly used to transport a few lengths of rail to a job site. Once that junk is cleared off, the side and end boards removed and, it goes bact to making money again. Railroads were quick to grab as many flats, gons, and even general rservice hoppers from the revenue stream as were necessary to get the job done. Home road cars are preferred but, when its wreck cleanup time, reporting marks go out the window. Foreign cars are also seen in ferrous scrap cleanup service after a track gang has passed through an area, especially when the scrap is destined for a mill in that road's region.
Some things to think about in loading your car. Much more than a stack more than two rails high, would travel in a gondola. A 39 foot 100 pound rail is a piece of steel weighs 1300 pounds, and when mis-handled, can do whatever it wants. By the 1970s, 100 lb. rail was rapidly losing favor, with the rapid growth in car capacities. This led to the granger lines shedding so many marginal lines and, quite possibly hastened the demise of the Rock Island and, the Milwaukee Road, as well as the formation of BN.
Assigning a homeroad car to temporary work train service gives you two cars for the price of one but, if you really want a unique project, some railroads cut down the sides of old gondolas to about two feet but left the ends at the original height to move small numbers of stick rails and other track materials such as spikes and tieplates. Remember, work trains hardly ever exceeded 25 MPH, so most of what they carried was with no tie downs, just the force of gravity. As you are a freelancer, you can do anything you wish and, MOW is limitless in variety.
Your cable reels? I'd ditch the strange cribbing and keep the reels as a gondola load instead.
The car I got didn't have the cable reels so I don't have to worry about that detail. My current plan is to convert the car with some homebuilt bulkheads as suggested by a prior post. I'm also thinking about putting some wood rails on the sides as well. I would need to shorten the stack to 39' to be accurate.
I used some otherwise scrap brass rail, and painted it a rust colour, to create a one-piece load of stick rail, with wood stickers (strip styrene) between the car's floor and the bottom layer of rail, and another layer on top, along with a few side-stakes...
It fits into this 50' Tichy composite gondola...
...and also into this 40' low-sided gondola, from Ertl...
...and also into Accurail gondolas.If the rail is to be dropped alongside track that's going to be repaired or upgraded, a small crane would likely be coupled to the gondola, to aid in unloading.
Wayne
That's another idea I can integrate. I already have a rail crane and caboose tender in the maintenence fleet.
There's always the idea of using just a purely standard car...
http://canadianfreightcargallery.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=cp301578&o=cprail
Chris van der Heide
My Algoma Central Railway Modeling Blog
What I've decided to do is modify a Tyco culvert car and turn it into something inspired by this: http://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5d56c77908f00300013224db/1573593286524-8006LJQ4UI4OEJ54RZBC/w123.jpg.
Should be an interesting kitbash project however it turns out.