A question for the gunzels, Building a pipe train for the Narrow Gauge Convention this weekend in Sydney Aust. Have done abit of a research & found many different ways they did their loading due to different sizes in pipe diameters. Pipes are yet to be painted & they are a scale 50' length as per the standard for this diameter pipe.... Looking at pic below,would most of you be ok with the way I've loaded this gon? TIA....
I would band them together, and then chain them to the car; at the very least. Look at proto photos--how were they secured back then?
That would be very large diameter pipe, and seems to be overly long. Many of the prototype shots show pipe only to the top of the gon. As Hemi points out these loads were banded together, but chain would not have been the optimal choice since that would damage the outside coating of the pipe which would render it dangerous and thus useless to the oil/gas industry. Will there be idler cars on either side of the gon? The gon itself looks great BTW
You could also ask the folks at San Juan Car Company. They sell pipe loads for their O scale cars in several diameters and could probably tell you how long they should be too.
In those days (50s and 60s) I believe that most of the pipe delivered to Farmington was 12 inch diameter, in lengths of 100'. There were some larger types of pipe such as that used in the El Paso Trunk Line which I believe was 30 inches in diameter and this may have been longer.
I'm trying to think of something you could use, which would be a more appropriate size for the load. All of the straws I can recall, will be too large in diameter. Boxcab E50
This link might be of some help, though it is for large scale: http://www.mylargescale.com/Community/Forums/tabid/56/view/topic/postid/85914/Default.aspx I have used the very thin, black coffee straws...I think I liberated some from a Starbucks
According to the San Juan Car Company website they are selling 8, 12 and 24 inch diameter pipe. http://www.sanjuancarco.com/RTRpipegon.html However, from the NG Forum I find this link which indicates that 16 and 30 inch pipe was also used. These were 40 feet long. There are plenty of posts at this thread for more details. http://ngdiscussion.net/phorum/read.php?1,28425,28425#msg-28425 I have also seen pictures of the 6500 series flats with the bulkheads being used to ship the narrower diameter pipes - perhaps the 8 inch variety. I can't seem to find them at the moment. However, I don't think any pipe that was shipped on the D&RGW was 100 feet in length.
Yep, I mis-spoke...40' was the standard. Although the larger diameter stuff DID indeed come in, it was relatively rare in those days. Most of the lines (many of which are now being dug up and replaced) back then were 8 to 12 inch diameter, and I think these were also in 40' lengths. These were used for tying well sites to gathering lines which were pushed to either processors or into the the then newly built El Paso Trunk Line. A lot of gas moved to the Bloomfield refinery, but not until much later after that facility was built. If one were to model this area at that time there are some really interesting model features you could explore. Like any resource extraction industry, the early oil/gas folks went where the work was. This meant that company owned "camps" rose in the middle of nowhere. Unlike the camp towns of the 1800s, these things really had some nice houses and associated facilities (I saw what may have been the last of these torn down in the late 1990s). These would be easy to model as the company houses followed about two floor plans. You could also have lots of pipeline construction with associated well pads and derricks...and of course the darned archaeologists digging something up that was in the way of construction, holding the whole job up The first gas boom (and it really was gas, not oil) brought this area back to life and changed the region forever. Within a few years the apple orchards that were the mainstay of the Farmington area were replaced with well pads and pipelines. Farming still was important (and still is) but the real thrust of this area is energy development. If you have access to the book "Colorado Memories of the Narrow Gauge Circle" by Krause and Grenard (Carstens Publications 1988), on Page 97 there is a small photo of pipe stacked on flat cars at Farmington. These pipes are what I am talking about, clearly 12 inch variety.
They look much thinner to me. And they are really held together with something that looks like wire in the foreground. But in the background of that picture, it would seem like some rather heavy double stranded chain going across the pipe load.
Yes, the pipe had a thin metal band holding it in bundles. Unless they padded the chain they did not wrap the pipe in it as this would have destroyed the thin outter coating, making the pipe useless for gas transport.
Thanks Thank you to all those that replied to my plight. I have found the Star Buck straws & these look more 'on the money'. Will post pic's of this little project,but for now,some pic's of the Nn3 Ophir Loop layout 80% finished for the Narrow Gauge Convention in Sydney from the weekend just past.
Jason, glad we could help! I look forward to pics of the finished product. The shots of Ophir look great. I live not far from the real Ophir and your shots characterize it very, very well
Jason, the layout looks great! Glad you have a solution. Perhaps you should shoot an email to RLW to drop a line in their kit about using starbucks straws? Your layout looks familiar; do you have a website? Michael
Thanks for the kind words gents,esp. Mr JCater,means alot coming from someone so close to the real deal.Would be a dream to visit Colorado one day...... Michael,would you beleive I was perusing the RLW web site today & came across his "pipe train" kit lol. I couldn't beleive it..... https://www.republiclocomotiveworks.com/show_item.php?ID=440 I'm not sure these are the right gons tho,it's driving me crazy as I know there is a book in at home somewhere that has all this info.... I'll be adding more trees,plus changing the location of some already on the layout.Adding rock moulds in the next week or so plus just a general finishing detail of the layout. Anyway,thanks again for everyones help.
Those gons may have been used but not until late in the game. Far more prevalent are were the gons you are modeling. Do keep us updated on your layout progress as well...always great to see quality work
Jason, The MTL gons in your photos are correct for pipe train service. Any of the D&RGW 32' 10 stake gons will do. When loaded the pipes were sitting on 12" x 12' timber supports. (Use HO scale 6" x 6") This was so the overhanging pipe ends would not foul on the deck of the idler cars. The first idler cars were the same gons with the side and ends removed. These did not last long as they used to fail in the middle. Replaced with flats made from 30' stock cars and 3000 series boxcars. Ask Geoff for his copy of the book "Narrow Gauge Pictorial, Volume 3". Soft cover book by Robert L. Grandt. See the following pages for pipe gons: p.29 - #1095 p.31 - #1163 p.46 - #1504 p.61 - #1763 P.62 - #1763 p.66 - #1839 p.67 - #1839 inside showing 12" x 12" timbers for loading p.84 - #9351 p.206 - #9542 - Idler flat p.87 - #9602 - 40' ex boxcar p.88 - 39612 - 40' ex boxcar The pipe cars in later years were cut down outside braced 40' boxcars. A good start would be an old Atlas outside braced car.
I don't know guys, that gondola looks more like a C&S gondola. I've never seen anything like that on the D&RGW in any of my NG pictorials, nor any other of the many books I have. Another item, the idlers made from gondolas did routinely fail so that's why they reinforced them with rails.
Not too sure about that...they don't look like C & S gons to me either. Like I say, they may be correct but those things likely did not come into service until late in the pipe delivery on the Farmington Branch. Far more prevalent were the cars like in your model...and flat cars if the Pictorial volumes are to be believed.
I presume that the gondola pictured is not from Microtrains, as it is definitely not a stock C&S car. Way too many stakes (much more like a D&RGW high side gon which hasn't been chewed up by the rotary dumper). We can't see the other distinguishing features either...trucks and underframe. The D&RGW cars had 10ish stakes. The (modern) C&S cars had 6. AC&F cars typically had 7 stakes. The famed AC&F Victor Gold Mining gondolas had 6. The model depicted has 9 stakes and too many boards to be the others (but that doesn't necessarily make it a D&RGW car either).
