Open Loads (Part 9) - West Coast Loading of Foreign Gondolas & Flats

Some of you might be wondering why a West Coast modeler is doing multiple lumber loads for foreign East Coast gondolas.

What to do with all the empty East Coast cars?  Reload them! - Jason Hill photo at LMRC, San Diego.

Well, I do like modeling equipment that would have been seen over Tehachapi Pass, which includes the lumber load traffic from Oregon and Northern California to Los Angeles and much of it was then sent east to El Paso and beyond.

A sizable number of the cars in this traffic flow were 'rollers' which were brokered en route and were sent via the longer route down out of the Pacific Northwest to Southern California.  This allowed more time before turning east to sell the load of lumber and diverted to the customer, which was preferred by the shippers.

Prototype Operating Considerations

From the collection of Dan Holbrook, the SCO C507 (May 1950 issued) includes notes that certain eastern roads allowed their gondolas on the west coast to be moved north or south to find loads that can move the cars back east of the Mississippi River, towards home.  The C507 also includes LV, B&O, BLE, CNJ-CRP, DL&W, Erie, NYC-PLE, NKP-WLE, PWV, Reading, Union, and WM, so for western modelers, don't be afraid to load your empty foreign gondolas with lumber loads!  - This is one of the reasons I've been building lumber loads for my B&O, Erie, NYC, and PRR cars.

I will also say that in my other research it would appear that some of these roads also allowed their flatcars to be reloaded also, so I'll be mentioning that at the end as well.

Some of the 1950 SCO directive from the eastern roads is probably a carry over from the WWII directive for the flatcars to be nationally pooled 'for the duration', which was found to be useful in some commercial revenue applications in the post-war era into the 1950s.

Note, some of these cars are repeating the use of the same loads in other cars... but that's to prove my point about being able to use a single set of loads to add variety to a single set of operating routing.  I've taken to index numbering the loads so I can keep track of them. I will be using their ID numbers in these photos so you can see which loads are swapping to other cars.

So let's have a look at some examples:

Tangent 52'6" Bethlehem Gondola

Load 1145 - B&O 259798, Tangent 52ft Gondola with full 3-stack OMM 3005 Lumber Load kit. 

The Tangent Bethlehem 52'6" gondolas can trans-load the lumber loads between them without any problems to create variety in the operating look of the trains.  This is an example of a B&O car.

Tangent 52'6" AC&F Gondola

Load 1145, 2 Stacks - PRR 372468 with two smaller stacks of lumber from OMM 3004 kit.

Tangent also produced this ACF 52'6" Gondola on the PRR these are G31Bs, which numbered in the 10's of thousands!  So by the early 1950s a very common East Coast type of car.

Load 1164 - This load is about 5/6s of an OwlMtModels 3005 kit.

This load is 5/6s of the OwlMtModels kit, configured in 2-3 stacks with 48" tall units.  Wooden cross bracing is replaced with 6lb fishing line 'iron wire' between the stakes over the load.

Load 1145 - Here's the full 3-stack 3005 kit in the PRR gondola.

There aren't many options when the full load is used, basically just the height of the units used.  The AAR standards say not to make units less than 30" and not more than 48".  Some cars in photos are not stacked out to the cubic limits of the car, as sometimes 'wet' or 'green' wood would weight much more than expected.  So there is some rhyme and reason for why cars appear to be "under loaded" in the same train.  Remember also that some of these cars are heading home towards restricted vertical clearance home-roads.  If the car makes it all that way as a 'roller' without being sold, then it will have to navigate the Plate-C Clearances, so on those cars, be sure to cut the stakes down and not load the car too high, even if cubic and weight allowances aren't a consideration.

Load 1065 - Fully wooden-braced 3005 kit.

This load is made up of 36" tall units in a 2-3-3 configuration.  Wooden bracing is used on this load, with two full stake sets outboard of the central top units.

Proto2000/Walthers 52'6" Greenville (WWII AAR) Gondola

Load 1145 - Proto2000/Walthers Greenville 52'6" WWII-built gondolas.

The Bethlehem and ACF cars by Tangent don't have collapsible stakes pockets on the interior of the sides, but instead moved to strap tie-downs along the top edge of the sides.  Proto2000/Walthers gondolas (NYC below) have molded collapsed stake pockets, which narrows the interior size of the car slightly, which means that full-size stakes can't be used effectively there on the OwlMt Lumber Loads.  Also providing actual stake pockets, instead of just wedging in the stakes for the cars that have no stake pockets, mean that it's possible to line up the stakes with the theoretical pockets if they were deployed.

Load 1065 - Swapping loads to the NYC P2K gondola

I will be building a couple more loads, one will specifically be with stakes to align with the stake pockets of the Proto2000 gondolas.  I will also be using the notched stake option, so that the load is more freely fitting, so I can easily remove the load from the car without catching the stakes on the carside.

Tichy 52'6" WWII Emergency Composite Gondola

Load 1145 - Tichy NYC 52'6" WWII Emergency Gondola with OwlMtModels 3005 3-stack load kit.

Tichy also makes a compatible composite WWII gondola, which can be loaded with lumber.  These cars are fun to weather with the contrast of wood sides with steel structure over the top.  Some railroads resheathed these cars in steel after the war-time material restrictions were lifted.

Walthers 46ft USRA Gondola

Load 1159 - Walthers 46ft USRA PRR 317083. one of the thousands of G25 class cars.

Chalk marks on the car side are used to align the stakes to the load.  In some ways this cuts down the positional options of the loads, but if the loads are kept as A/B stacks, then they can be transposed or rotated in multiple arrangements to vary the look of the same load.

Load 1169 - Another PRR G25 with a steel-top-banded load which has started to shift noticeably.

This load is the subject over the previous Open Loads (Part 8) post.  The load uses the ChartPak 1/64" tape for the high-tension steel-bands across the top of the load.  I modeled this load as a shifting stack of lumber.  Thankfully the load therefore is not centered around the stake sets, which should stay aligned with the car's pockets... and allows off-set arrangements if I rotate the two stacks or transpose their positions.

Load 1169, transposed - LV 27202 is another Walthers' 46ft USRA gondola.

In this photo with the Walthers LV model, the loads have been transposed outwards from the car's center.  The load's still shifted, but the two stacks aren't to the point of impacting each other.

Load 1159 again, this time in Erie 15503, a stock Walthers 46ft USRA Gondola.

As can be seen, just changing the loads around a bit creates new looks to the cars, thus making each train look unique, even if you've not re-blocked the train.  Just changing which load goes in which car and how, will make your sessions 'feel different' from a visual stand point.

Load 153 in NYC 501536, another Walthers 46ft Gondola

I'm not sure if the black NYC gondolas are correct for post-WWII cars.  The stock Walthers model comes with a tare date of 1947, so might be right.  Any NYC modelers are welcome to tell me if it's wrong.  In any case, NYC cars certainly were available to reload and send towards home.

The Load 153 is one that's actually designed to fit a Red Caboose steel GS gondola, but it works well here too, although the stakes don't line up with the car's pockets, so these would have to be wedged in against the car's sides.

Foreign Flatcars?

I know of at least one photo of a B&O 40ft P-11 class car loaded with lumber in San Diego, circa 1955.  San Diego actually had sawmills to cut up large log rafts brought down by ocean-tug from the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia.  So it's hard to tell if the B&O flat was a 'roller' from the PNW which was diverted to San Diego because the lumber was sold, or if it was a foreign car being reloaded for movement eastward towards home.  In the end I guess it doesn't really matter, as either would be a reasonable explanation of what the car was doing loaded with lumber at the southern edge of the USA.

F30A Flatcars from Bowser or Rapido

PRR 475237 with a pair of lumber stacks over the trucks.

Here's some examples of PRR F30A flatcars from Bowser loaded with the new OwlMtModels 3003 Lumber Loads.

PRR 475260 with a couple of centered stacks. - Looks like the brakewheel got smashed, gonna have to get a carmen to fix that up!

While these smaller 2-stack loads wouldn't be taxing the 70-ton capacity of the Pennsy flats, it was a way to get some extra lumber moving east if these were 'rollers' and cover some future order from a yard along the way.

Again PRR 475260, this time with a much higher board-feet count load.

In this load, I kitbashed some of the panels into a very long load, and then did a couple of more regular stacks.  The 50ft deck length of the F30A makes "fully loading" it a bit trickier, but possible with some creativity.

A high-view of 475260 with a load of older 3001 lumber loads, in this case with iron-wire banding.

Don't forget you can build centered stack loads, like this one too.  I suggest putting some of the separator pieces lengthwise to tie the bottom of the load together for strength.

P2K/Walthers 52'6" AAR WWII Standard Flatcars

C&NW AAR WWII Flatcar loaded with lumber. (Walthers/P2K flatcar, OMM 3003

Other cars from the mid-west could also be reloaded, as it would be easier to send them home.  However, this would not have the SCO authorization from the owner to send them empty anywhere in the western US to find that load.  So these would be locally unloaded near the lumber loading areas of NP, GN, UP/OSL, SP, etc. and then sent out as needed, hopefully towards home rails!

A heavy load of lumber, probably near the capacity for the 50-ton NKP flatcar.

Here's an Nickle Plate example, this car would be a 'long east' car working its way back towards home.  If it was a 'roller', it could probably show up just about anywhere in the country with this load.

Balancing the Message

Obviously, the 'home roads' would have to provide their own cars if enough 'foreign' cars couldn't be used.  This results in the mixed consists that are what we see most of the time: home road cars, interchanged partner roads, and then the really far from home cars that have been reloaded all mixed together.  

SP 4177 Lumber Drag 1-671 two miles east of Oakridge 1947 - Vanishing Vista postcard JT-63, Jason Hill collection

In the photo above, we can see many different railroad's cars mixed in this consist.  For Southern Pacific trains leaving Oregon, interchanges would be from the friendly NP, and less friendly UP, CP,  CN.  The GN and WP were at the time more friendly with Santa Fe's connections, but they certainly would still interchange if the customer had ordered the routing to go via the SP.

The advent of hump yards allowed for better sorting by destination of interchanged cuts, but even then the 'rollers' are going to be a wildcard as to when they will be sold and need to be cut out of the train.  Usually the diversion points would be a place which had the yard facilities to handle breaking up the consist anyway.

In Closing

The east coast sends the rust, the west coast will return the favor with splinters.  So it's fun to have both removable steel loads and lumber loads for the same pool of cars, then you can mix up sending them away from home loaded and either send them home empty or reload them with local products.

An overview of the lumber loads shown above. - Notice specifically the differences: wood paint/coloring, shifted loads, and bracing with wood, iron wire, and steel bands.

Another point of variation is not building all the loads with identical methods of bracing, or even style of bracing.  Unless you're modeling a lumber mill shipping 20 carloads of lumber under the same crew and foreman, the different mills would each load their cars differently.  Mill A might have started using steel banding and palletized loads on flatcars, but the rest haven't except for Mill C, which only uses them to connect the top of the stakes.  Mill B is still using iron wire between the stakes, while D, & E all are still using wooden bracing because they have the extra scrap hardwood pieces.

Jason Hill

Related Articles:

Open Loads (Part 8 ) - Modeling High-Tension Steel Banding on Lumber Loads

Open Loads (Part 7) - Shifted Lumber Loads - What happens when your load moves?

Open Loads (Part 5) - Lumber Loads on Flats & Gondolas - Examples of Open Lumber Loads.

Open Loads (Part 2) - Lumber in Boxcars - Ideas for building lumber loads inside boxcars.

Lumber Load in Gondola SP 160522 - MDC Kitbash - Modifying OwlMtModels 3004 Lumber Load for gondola with false-load below gondola sides.