show us your HO car loads

I spliced a couple MDC bulkhead flat cars together to make the car, detailed, painted, decaled and weathered this car. Got a Jeager, Pope And Talbot lumber load. Now I see why there are always these kind of kits cheap at swap meets. It is definitely not all that user friendly. After I emptied the box on the bench, and started trimming, folding the paper and wrapping all those blocks, well lets just say 3 days later I was still wrapping those miserable blocks. I used very thin Scotch tape under all the paper wrapped loads to help hold the paper wrapping and banding in place. A word of advise, use contact cement of some type to coat the blocks for the paper wrapping, ( I used carpenters glue) otherwise you will have trouble gluing the load together, on final assembly. I glued the first layer of blocks to a thin piece of brass flat strap cut 3/8 of an inch shorter than the load, painted flat Black. I then glued the supplied 4x4" vertical supports in, and layered the load from there. Got some scale 2x4 to put between the layers. After all the layers were added I put the final bands around the whole load. There is a lot of banding, and I still have enough left over for several more projects. The banding is Drafting tape, you can still buy it in different colors and widths. The kit came with Nylon thread which I didn't want to use.
Anyway still need to finish weathering and loading the car, there are a few supports to trim and glue in the stake pockets a strip of wood down the sides to hold the load in place, it is interesting to note that there are no straps over the load to the stake pockets, which is good for this project, as I am going to make it so the car can be unloaded and ran MT.
Thanks for checking in.

 

Yup, a lot of work, but what a great load!

 

Looks like a project for me, where can you purchase the kits from?

 

ok thanks I have ordered two sets

 

Thanks guys. I learned a lot on this little project.

 

Made these metal coils from 1" OD 5/8 ID, .190 thick walled pipe. They are 5/8 long, and I have 4 on each coil car, 3 in the gondolas. 47 coil cars, 2 gondolas. It works out there is over 9 feet of pipe on this thing, it really weighs a bunch. Chucked the pipe in a lathe used a parting tool to make 200ish of these things. I then chucked them again and ran a pointed tool, across the face very fast, and it simulated coil layers pretty good, or it passes over a foot away. Painted them with a metal colored paint. Wrapped them with thin drafting tape with a dot of Red paint for band clamps. When it goes up the 2 1/2% it takes 5 SD's up front and a couple helpers.

 

I wanted them heavy LOL. Dont know if PVC would have been heavy enough. Do they make 1" PVC pipe that has .180-.200 wall thickness?

 

I agree, a heavy train should be heavy! makes you use the appropriate amount of units to move it. That is a VERY impressive train!

 

Tom, I rank you among the best modelers out there! I think you are really on your game. Great work! I enjoy following your projects more than looking at the Trackside Photos in Model Railroader.