Hi everyone!I got so excited about building a lumber and paper products layout that I forgot about dealing with open load cars.maybe I have created a monster?????? UPTODAY
It's all about what makes you happy. My layout could be nothing but covered hoppers and tank cars and that is prototypical for what I model. Box cars and open hoppers would be very out of place in my world.
Open load cars? Such as wood chip hoppers? Shouldn't be too hard to model. Loaders for such can be as simple as a truck dump.
I operated a gravel pit with live loads (loose gravel!) for many a year. I would ship cars out. Between sessions, I would take cars from staged train, tump the gravel into a little container. Run empties back to the gravel pit and reload from the container between sessions. But only handled one or two cars at a time. I have built a couple of sulphur gondolas with sulphur loads made of floral foam painted yellow and dusted with yellow dry powdered pigment. A very small wire loop sticks up from the load so I can pull it out with a hook when delivered to the sulphur export terminal. Plan to eventually run 8 or 10 or 12 sulphur gons. My imperfect solution so far for equipment shipped on flat car. All six tractors on this flatcar are glued to a couple of thin narrow sticks so they can be listed off as a unit when delivered. I use very light touch of stationery store rubber cement to hold them lightly in place during transit but easily removable. Someday will want to model chain-downs etc. more realistically. Pipe and machinery in gondolas can be simply set in place. Just lift them out and replace.
I have 12 walthers 45ft. log cars and 12 real log loads which can be staged on the branchline siding.The log pond dump track can hold 6 cars beyond the unloader ,so you can stage 6 empties at the log pond,then bring in loads from the siding and switch out the cars,6 empties out ,6 loads in.This can take about 10 minutes.Woodchip cars loaded at the sawmill go to the papermill,empty cars back to the sawmill.centerbeams at the sawmill go to the retail lumber yard,empties back to the sawmill.Also have 9 100 ton open hoppers with gravel loads and glacier gravel co.No place for the hoppers to go .Also have two 6 foot long fiddle tracks.all n scale.also retail oil co and 5 tank cars.
The don't need a physical destination on your layout. Run them from the gravel pit, to the fiddle yard. Remove the loads, and bring them back in a few days. Pretending their destination is far off gives us a way to expand our empires, using imagination. It is concept named "beyond the layout". For on layout consumption, get a few ballast cars for your railroad. Those can be loaded out and a work train occasionally distribute that ballast for ongoing track work.
Last but not least,all my cars have removable loads.I plan on using a gable roofed carport structure at the papermill to simulate unloading and the same at the sawmill to load chip cars.enough said.
Thanks everyone for your advise!I have some confidence again.By the way ,my wife thinks my destination is very far away also!!!!!!
