Freight Car Models – Page 15 – Notes on Designing, Building, and Operating Model Railroads

New Haven steel coal gondolas

Fellow Pre-Depression Era modeler Dave Parker has sent notes on a recent resin freight car kit build. Click on any image here to review a larger size. Here’s Dave’s story.

In 1929, the New York, New Haven and Hartford received 500 class GA-2 gondolas from the Pressed Steel Car Company. These all-steel, drop-bottom gons had an inside length of 40 feet, and were numbered in the 58000-58499 series. Based on my collection of Official Registers, 496 remained in service as of 1945, but by 1955 this number had dwindled to 276 cars, and all had been rebuilt as solid-floor cars (GB classification). At some intermediate date, probably about 1950, the 58000 series apparently contained a mix of original and rebuilt cars, but I do not own an ORER that gives the exact numbers.

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Truck Installation tips

This sounds pretty simple, right? I mean, you just turn the screw until it’s tight and then turn it back a quarter or a half turn so the truck pivots and rocks side to side. Sure, that is the way I had installed freight car trucks for years until a truck wouldn’t pivot well or I stripped out the threads in the hole.

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Beyond the Box

We wish it were as easy as opening a box to add a new freight car on the layout. Here are a few processes to transform a kit to a completed freight car ready for service.

Readers may have noticed most of my freight cars go through a few phases as they progress from parts in a kit box to layout use with a weathered patina. These construction phases are common for many prototype modelers as we customize basic freight car kits, or ready-to-run models (RTR), in order to reflect a specific prototype or era. Let’s take a look at these phases.

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Decal techniques

I see quite a few questions about applying decals on discussion lists and in private emails that arrive. There is a fear of failure for many modelers in the decal application process. I know this anxiety. It had a hold of me for awhile as I believed I would mess up the job. Let’s review techniques that helped me work towards a solid final appearance.

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About my freight car fleet

Freight cars ready for the next operating session.

I received an email from a regular blog visitor at the end of 2015 that posed some very interesting questions. Here’s the message.

“Many of your recent posts describe prototypes built no more than fifteen years prior to your 1926 modeling period.

Do you know of – or have a feel for – the average age of the freight car fleet at that time? It seems to me that the great majority of the prototypes you have modeled so far represent relatively new cars. I know there was a lot of rolling stock construction going on around the end of the First World War and through the nineteen-twenties, but how much of this replaced older cars, rather than augmenting them and growing the overall fleet size?

I also am aware that car (and train) weights were increasing at that time so the very oldest cars may no longer have been man enough to run with the new construction, but presumably you need some cars built prior to 1910 or so to maintain a representative total fleet?”

There are some good questions here for anyone modeling the 1920s or a specific era. Let’s take a look at each question and some data and opinion.

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