Some suggested loads for the gondola cars

Feedback, questions, updates on current projects, you name it!
Post Reply
NormHart
Posts: 274
Joined: Tue Nov 01, 2011 9:22 am
Location: Calistoga, California

Some suggested loads for the gondola cars

Post by NormHart »

Hi Curtis,

I was fooling around with your gondola cars and thinking to myself that wood-chips were probably not a particularly likely load for the 1860-1910s. This lead me to wonder about the possibility of how much split/cut wood billets (aka fuel) would fit in one of the tall gondolas. While the flatcars with this load are nice it strikes me as more likely that they would just throw the fire wood into a gondola all higglety pigglety. I'm not sure what the mass would be but it ought to not be much more, and possibly less, than a load of wood-chips. I also mentioned potash and was thinking that they might carry that in gondolas and concluded that the load would probably be covered in canvas. This started me thinking about grain which would also be covered, so perhaps a canvas covered gondola would make an interesting load since you could use the canvas cover for many different products. The mass limit on the high side gondolas makes them unsuitable for most loads like earth or gravel but general goods like boxes, barrels etc. would work and would be preferable to using a flatcar IMO. Another thought I had was having standing passengers in the gondolas or some combination of passengers and goods.

I have not experimented with this yet but thought you might find some of this interesting.

:mrgreen:
Pencil
Site Admin
Posts: 1287
Joined: Sat Oct 08, 2005 10:28 am
Location: Portland, Oregon

Re: Some suggested loads for the gondola cars

Post by Pencil »

Hi Norm,

Grain would generally be carried in a boxcar - in barrels, sacks, or just loose (planks would be placed across the doorways to keep it from spilling out). In fact, most things were carried in boxcars in that time. The high-sided gondolas are a bit of a challenge, due to the low load limit of the supporting flatcar.
Loose, irregular firewood would make sense, although cordwood would be stacked on a flatcar (more efficient use of space than just throwing it in)

Curtis
Post Reply