Mining Equipment on the Move

Here are cars carrying a feeder, stamps for a stamp mills, the camshaft for the mill, a retort, crusher and Wilfley table base.

The well car with 20-foot gear. The bottom of the gear extends below the car deck, almost to the rails to provide enough clearance for the tunnels. The second car carries a steam engine frame while the third car carried the rest of the engine parts plus its flywheels.

I like loads on flat cars. With the railroad bringing goods to the gold rush country, it seems logical that some of this heavy equipment would show up on flat cars on the S&C. I had an old kit made by Western Scale Models which represented such a load of various types of mining equipment. I finally decided to put the thing together and place them on a couple of flat cars. The original plan of the kit maker was that everything would fit on two 40-foot flats. When you're using 30-foot flats, the load takes up three cars. Adding in the steam engine load from American Model Builders increases the train to 5 cars. When I had gotten this far, I realized that I had to build one of my favorite loads, a 20-foot diameter gear on a well car. This particular load was copied from 1875 newspaper articles and an photo of the car. So now we have a six-car train which, due to the gear (which barely clears the tunnel portals), will have to operate very slowly, not exceeding, say, 10 mph. We'll see how that weaves in with the other traffic on the line.

   

This overview of Milton shows the Tornado Hotel at the left along with a barn which is a stand-in for a livery stable and blacksmith shop to be built. The Masonic Lodge is in the center with the town stretching behind it. Alongside the tracks are the various warehouses and freight forwarders. A corral will be on this side of the tracks along with a turntable to be at the right just out of the picture.

Here is another photo of Milton which I wanted to include in the last post. I think it shows the town in a better view. As I mentioned, I still need a few structures and a turntable to round things out.

Kit-Built Flat Cars

Three new flat cars ready for service. Stakes are scale 4x4s inserted in the stake pockets. The end stakes would have been used on loads such as firewood which would be stacked across the width of the car. Before the 20th century and the banding of lumber piles, the side stakes would have been used to hold such loads in place. In wheat country, the portable steam engine would be used for powering the threshing machines. Now I have to come up with a way to tie that engine down to the car.

While waiting for paint to dry (it seems I do more waiting than working), I decided to try putting together some of my flat car "kits." Why flat cars? In the 1890s, the railroads had about 50% of their fleets made up of flat cars. That would change toward boxcars going into the 20th century but, for now, I needed more flats. I really wanted to make up some nice loads of boilers, carriages and other neat things and, for that, I needed the flats.
    The pieces used to build these cars were laser cut for me by a friend who, obviously, has a laser cutting machine. I designed the car after an 1870s era Central Pacific flat car and tried to get as much work done in the laser cut as I could. When cutting out the car, I had the holes for Grandt Line stake puts burned in the car sills as well as more holes for nut-bolt-washer castings for truss rods, etc. I did have to buy the stake pockets, NBW castings and some Tichy brake wheels and mounts for flats.
   

The main frame of the car with its attendant pieces. Sides frames are at the bottom while bolsters and needle beams are at the top. Buffer blocks at each end. Note the holes ready to receive the Grandt Line stake pocket castings.

The parts went together quickly and pretty much flawlessly using white glue. The decks were also laser cut and included the little cutouts for the stake pockets and well as the stake pockets at the deck ends (a common feature of that period). The couplers were Kadee 711 and I used some 3D printed trucks I purchased from a Shapeways seller. The trucks are of the Allen or California pattern used almost exclusively in the west and were of the swing motion variety. Reboxx wheelsets completed them.
    One of the things I did was make two flat cars each bearing the same number. The loads I wanted to model would those that were tied and lashed down with chain, rope and chocks and would not be easy to remove. When operating the railroad, the crews would deliver the car with its load but I wanted to be able for them to remove the empty car. The easiest way to do this would be to build two identical cars, one with the load and the other with just the remnants of the dunnage. So far, I haven't put any loads on them except for the portable boiler/engine and that isn't tied down yet.
   Now, back to finishing up my two locomotives.

A Couple More Heinz Cars

Heinz Vinegar Tank No. 50. waiting in Oakdale for a gigantic salad.

While I was cleaning up after my Heinz car project (http://sandcrr.blogspot.com/2015/10/condiment-cars.html), I found two other cars and a couple of photos that prompted me to do another two Heinz cars. The first photo was of a large vinegar tank car. What appealed to me was the pickle cutout mounted on the side of the car. I looked through my decals and found that Art Griffin had made a decal for just that car. He said that the lettering was designed for an AHM wood tank car which I happened to have on hand.
    The car was easily painted and the walk on the side of the car added. The railing is from a Central Valley fence set. I made the cutout by applying the decal to a piece of .020" styrene and then cutting around the decal outline. A roof hatch was made with some tubing and a circular piece of styrene.
 

Vinegar Tank car No. 203 is a two-compartment tanker kitbashed from two kits.

    The second car was also modeled after an old photo. I had a Northeastern Models Richter Tank Car which I thought I could use except that it was too long and too modern looking. The prototype photo (too poor to reproduce here) looked like a tank mounted on a flat car. I found an old 35-ft. flat car kit in my stock and assembled it according to the instructions. The two tanks on the Northeastern kit were cut down to fit on the car. The end pieces and the letterboard were added along with the filler covers. The artwork for the decals was worked up and printed out and applied. I had to use a lot of decal softener to get the "57" to form around the tank rods.
    Although there are more Heinz cars to be built at some point, I think I will stop for right now. I have too many to have on the railroad at one time and my display case is getting crowded. Time for a different project.

Condiment Cars

Ten new Heinz cars at Oakdale. The two white cars are the earliest paint scheme with the two yellow cars represent the latest scheme. Heinz changed the paint frequently and even had at least one car advertising a different product on each side of the car.

Before I left California to move to Kansas City in 2005, I had started to assemble ten Westerfield kits. All the things associated with moving overcame me, however, and I packed away the kits to be built later. Over the last few weeks, I finally finished them. As you can see, they are all based on cars used by the H. J. Heinz Company.
    Due to variety of car decorations and the products mentioned, I have always like the Heinz cars. Fortunately for modelers, I guess Westerfield did as well since they came up with numerous lettering sets to adorn their kits. Clover House has done so as well as has Art Griffin. The old Heinz Special Interest Group researching and promoting the cars helped as well. The kits are still available if anyone has any leanings toward condiments being advertised on railroad cars.
   The cars appear to be refrigerator cars but they are not. Most of the Heinz "reefers" were built like refrigerator cars but without ice compartments so they were just insulated boxcars. This makes sense as most of the products produced you find right on the grocery store shelves rather than in the cooler. I assembled the cars per the kit instructions. Some of them require swing motion trucks rather than arch bars. I used ones that Westerfield had originally made for these kits and which are not marketed by Wiseman Model Services (http://www.locopainter.com/store/product.php?id=422). They are fiddly to assemble but do look good.
    When I finally finished the ten-year-old project, I took inventory and found that I still have four more car kits plus enough decals for 15-20 more cars. I doubt that I will build them all but they are fun to look at.

Combination Boxcars

An early photo of the SP system's 34-foot combination boxcar.

AHM/IHC's version of the combination boxcar.

The term "combination" as applied to boxcars meant a universal car to the folks at the Central/Southern Pacific. It came equipped with various barred openings in the sides and ends which could be closed by internal sliding doors. Close the doors and you have a secure and weather-tight car. Open the doors in various combinations and you had a stock car, a ventilated fruit or produce car or a car suitable for carrying flammable liquids. In the latter case, the lower doors allowed any vapors from leakage to be blown out of the car rather than accumulate.
   The SP system had hundreds of these cars starting with the outside-braced cars of the 1870s (kits made by Rio Grande Models) to 28-foot cars (no kits) to the 34-foot cars which are the subject of this post. The 34-footers made their first appearance in 1891 and were distributed around the SP system for accounting purposes. This resulted in reporting marks for the SP, CP, O&C, SP of Arizona, SP of New Mexico and others. See Tony Thompson's Southern Pacific Freight Cars, Volume 4 for more details.The combination cars were replaced by iced refrigerator cars and most were off the roster by 1900 but there were still many around in 1895
 

The reworked AHM cars.

 I chose to model four cars for my railroad, one each lettered for the Southern Pacific, Central Pacific, Oregon & California and California Pacific. Fortunately, AHM and, later, IHC produced plastic cars based on this prototype. The cars are generally crude and do not have the end doors so some modification was needed.
 

End doors were cut and barred. This car represents one with
the openings closed by the inner solid doors.

To make my cars, I removed the truss rods, molded-in brake staff/chain and cut three square holes in each end of the car. The bars on these openings were made from .020" styrene rod. Nylon fishing line truss rods with Grandt turnbuckles were installed along with Cal-Scale brake wheels. The grab irons were 23" and 18" preformed pieces made by Westerfield. In this period, the SP used a one-piece grab-iron which wrapped around the end of the car to form both the side and end irons. I used the Westerfield irons installed with Art and Adrian Hundhausen's (Silvercrashcarworks.com) method to try and get the proper appearance. Intermountain wheels replaced the plastic wheels which came with the car although the truck frames were used. The end result is not an exact copy of the prototype but it works for me at least for now.
   In 1895, there were few of the 34-foot cars compared to the 28-foot cars. Although Mantua/Tyco made a car similar to them, my version, when I get around to making them, will have to be scratchbuilt. Another project for another time.