Building up the long coal drag. All hoppers need loads. Here we have a mass production of loads getting started.
Here we have all my hoppers needing loads. Each one now has a soft pione blank that will be shaped, painted black, and covered with HO scale coal, glued in place with white glue. Right now I just have pine blanks cut to fit all the hoppers.
Here is a typical hopper with the pine black just set into it to check t he fit.
Here is just a pine blank.
Here is the radial arm saw (RAS) that makes cutting the blanks to size easy.
David Starr www.newsnorthwoods.blogspot.com
Hi,
Over the years I picked up numerous coal loads offered by various mfgs. Some are pretty good, some not so much. One thing (similar to what you plan) that worked nicely was to coat the loads with white glue mix and pour on WS artificial coal. It really brings the store bought loads to life.
ENJOY !
Mobilman44
Living in southeast Texas, formerly modeling the "postwar" Santa Fe and Illinois Central
Real coal does look great over a nicely shaped base. It can be a bit messy, because even if glued well, you'll always loosen some when handling it to load and MT the car. One way around that is to go with cast resin or plaster that's painted black if it isn't already. I have a bunch of those I use in my standard gauge drop-bottom GS gons. Plus a few car come with a load. I think these are Atlas Trainman hoppers in the middle track in this pic under the tipple, although they're kinda dusty gray in this pic.
What I usually do now you can see in the narrowgauge drop-bottom gons on the nearer track. One advanatge it has is it doesn't tend to show dust much. Why? It's foam. Here's the underside in it's natural color ashumdifier media.
You get a big one for $7 or $8, enough to cut maybe 20 NG ones, or about 10 standard gauge loads.
This is it painted flat black up close.
Where you can see through it around the edges, it's obviously foam. Once it's in the car, you don't see that fringe effect for the most part. In fact, it just looks like coal from 2' to 3' away.
It's also very light, a real consideration in NG, less so in SG.
Being foam and light, I can usually pluck it out of a car to "unload" it with the tip of an uncoupling pick. This saves a lot of irritating rerailing in NG.
Being a woodworker, I understand the attraction of the wood loads. Just wanted to offer an alternative that is super fast to make, cheap, and operates well.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
You go to a builder's supply place that sells sandblasting equipment. You buy a bag of black sandblasting medium, a 50 or 100 pound bag ought to cost only a few dollars. Think of all the cars you can load with that stuff. Of course you will need leveral locomotives on the point, and for a long train a pusher or two.
But then, WTH, coal is heavy stuff.
ROAR
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
BroadwayLion ....buy a bag of black sandblasting medium....
That's what I use as "live" loads, but mine (originally for use as locomotive traction grit in place of sand) was free. The 34' Athearn hopper shown weighs 8oz.
I also use coke breeze, a by-product of industrial coke making, as loose coal loads in my locomotive tenders:
A 34' Athearn hopper loaded with it weighs 4.5oz.
Wayne
Could you also use insulation foam shapped to look like coal loads and measured to fit into the hoppers? Of course, the loads need to get painted black with some scale coal on top secured using white glue? I've not done this, but your excellent post gave me that idea. What an inexpensive method, if deemed realistic.
A friend of mine for years used genuine crushed coal in his cars, and we would dump the loads into coffee cans at the end of the run in hidden staging, and load other cars from the same can. This had the unexpected advantage of weathering his coal hopper interiors very nicely with all the coal dust. Unfortunately it also had the unexpected consequence of weathering the staging yardmaster (me) with coal dust and I learned not to wear white shirts or tan pants.
Eventually he switched to using really fine-grained foam rubber -- more like the stuff in pillows than the more coarse furnace filter material that a prior poster showed above. He cut a 3/4" block of foam to fit his cars, roughed the texture just a little, and painted it black and it was very plausible looking. Visitors were always shocked if they came to the hidden staging room and watched me pull out the loads with a dental pick or stuff them in a car with my fingers - shocked because it looked either like a solid cast load or like real coal. All his loads could be squeezed into one large shoe box. I might add that all his coal hoppers were basically identical size which helped make the loads.
On this friend's layout all loads are live loads, so when loads arrive I remove the coal, the scrap metal (loose rusted bits of stuff kept in a coffee can), the rebar, the utility poles, the Catarpillar loads, piggyback trailers, rock, -- all sorts of loads, all of which have specific storage spaces. His car forwarding system covers this load to empty to load again sequence. This "live loads" system does come at the expense of having very realistic load bracing but that is a compromise he can live with.
Also, except for coal hoppers which are reused, when a car arrives in staging it is taken off the layout and placed in a storage area, and it may be a year or even more (depending on how many operating sessions he has) before his car routing system calls for it to be on the layout again. This really helps keep operating sessions fresh and different from the ones before, even if the schedule of trains is the same.
Dave Nelson
On the left, some actual coal I crushed glued to a shaped, styrofoam block. Middle, some black sand from a pet store over styrofoam. On the left, just styrofoam sprayed black.
Not sure I don't like the simple, painted styrofoam the best...
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
I had run "live" loads before, in the really too light Athearn BB hoppers that I own. (Feather-lite weight cars in HO scale. Seriously.)
Then a passing "dummy train" (Set my DCC throttle, and forget it) on a passing main picked a switch (that the operator, aka me, had forgoten was set against the main....) and knocked into the last two cars with the live loads.
I was cleaning up (read "vacuuming") HO scale coal for the next two weeks....
That ended the live loads.....
Now, foam topped with said crushed coal.
Ricky W.
HO scale Proto-freelancer.
My Railroad rules:
1: It's my railroad, my rules.
2: It's for having fun and enjoyment.
3: Any objections, consult above rules.
mlehman You get a big one for $7 or $8, enough to cut maybe 20 NG ones, or about 10 standard gauge loads. This is it painted flat black up close. Where you can see through it around the edges, it's obviously foam. Once it's in the car, you don't see that fringe effect for the most part. In fact, it just looks like coal from 2' to 3' away. It's also very light, a real consideration in NG, less so in SG. Being foam and light, I can usually pluck it out of a car to "unload" it with the tip of an uncoupling pick. This saves a lot of irritating rerailing in NG.
This foam shown is for sale at Home Depot and is used for putting in eaves troughs so that they don't plug with leaves, but the rain water flows through real easy.
It's not very expensive either.
Johnboy out.................
from Saskatchewan, in the Great White North..
We have met the enemy, and he is us............ (Pogo)
Thanks for the tip, Johnboy. It could be the same stuff, as it's a relatively stiff foam and I could see it bridging a gutter. Or is it as thick as the gutter is deep? That might be more work to cut into loads, as most of mine are less than an inch tall. Certainly could be cheaper in the mass quantities needed for gutters.
In any case, what's important about the foam is that it is somewhat stiff and that it holds up to being painted. You don't want your foam to whither if you start painting it.
I use mattress underlay foam for my coal loads. After cutting it to fit, I spray paint them glossy black.
http://cprailmmsub.blogspot.ca/2010/05/easy-coal-loads-from-foam.html
John Longhurst, Winnipeg
Mike, you are quite right. The stuff I saw and bought is as deep as the trough is, but I am sure it is the same material and it would deffinately stand up to painting and gluing. Shaping it for hoppers might be a bit of a chore, at least there would be some waste I would imagine.
Great reading that I can use foam for coal loads. I have 2" foam, but can cut it in half to create the loads (flat part goes inside the car and cut part visible). Painting it black w/ cheap craft paint and adding some WS coal is great.
What an inexpensive and cheap way of making coal loads. Good stuff! Between making coal loads and using foam for making hills, I won't have much laying around.
Moving on. Rough carving of the pine blanks into something more coal like.
I
I use a jack plane, a 1 inch wood chisel, and my 4 inch jointer for the carving. It could be done with just a Swiss Army knife, but heh if you got 'em might as well use 'em.
Same roughly carved coal load along side the hopper car.
First five loads rough carved. Only nine more to go. After rough carving, I will smooth things over with a drum sander on my radial arm saw.
Drum sander on my RAS smooths the rough carved blanks, quick and easy.
Here we have 15 coal loads, sanded to shape, one coat of poly urethane to seal the grain, one coat of dark gray auto primer to make the white pine dark as coal, coat of white glue, layer of HO scale coal.
And a single hopper with load.
And fifteen hoppers, with loads, packed into boxes. That concludes the coal load project for this season anyhow.
David,
Those loads look great.
Interesting, you have the same radial arm saw I do. I may even have that attachment, as I got a bunch of different stuff with it when I acquired it that I've never really looked at yet. A drum sander could come in handy.
INHO that is the best RAS Sears ever sold. I got mine second hand in the early 1970's. I like the cast iron arm, the beefy column bracket, the front mounted column height crank, and power of the motor. It stays in alignment. It rips two by fours with ease. The later Sears RAS's went with stamped sheet metal arms, and motor head tracks secured with self tapping screws.