So since I've returned from a year of college, I've had a rather major change of heart about my passion for model railroading (and it's not the change of heart you would likely assume). Rather than lose my love for the hobby, I find myself even more appreciative of it. However, that new appreciation does come with a loss. I decided about a month ago to change railroads, locales, seasons, and eras. I've traded in my HO scale New York Central layout set during the summer of 1958 in Upstate New York for a modern (Feb. 2014) representation of the Long Island Rail Road and New York & Atlantic Railway during the aftermath of a blizzard. This change was hard for me to come to terms with considering I've enjoyed working on the NYC layout for many years now, but I'm a Long Islander and I know more about the modern operations of the commuter/freight services of my region than the NYC's equivalents from 60 years ago. With that said, I've already been amassing information and pictures of my new railroads for reference, and I've just started to do some random small modeling projects. I don't have space for a layout just yet so at this point I'm just stockpiling finished projects for ease of setup later. The project I will now describe was my first project of the summer and in my opinion, it turned out very well. I hope some of you find it applicable to your layouts and give it a try. Here we go:
I decided to do a construction debris load for an Atlas gondola I picked up at the hobby shop about a month ago. From what I've observed from online photos and YouTube videos, the New York & Atlantic hauls tons of construction debris loads in various types of gondolas from demolition sites all over the island. These loads consist of all types of dusty scraps from drywall and tarps to broken lumber and other broken bits (you know what I mean). The prototype picture below shows the look of what we are going to try to achieve (photo by Christopher Millette of Erie-Times News).
I want to start off by saying that this project will cost you absolutely nothing for the most part; we are going to create this effect with all household items or things you can get outside of the house free of charge. The picture below will show only some of the endless different things we could use to create the debris in this gondola. What you want to find are unused paper napkins, junk notepads, plastic grocery bags, styrene scrapings, balsa shavings, and even the netting that holds fruits at the grocery store.
What you want to do next is start ripping the scraps of paper or plastic and placing them into a container. You then take some heavy-duty scissors and chop away at the paper and plastic until you get a fine material. I recommend doing a little at a time because you don't want your hand to cramp up. You'll eventually get a consistency as seen below:
***please note: you can click on all of these images for a larger view***
Next you're going to take your shredded scraps and place them in a smaller Dixie cup for staining. I stained the material with a brown wash of acrylic paints and a mixture of alcohol/india-ink. Once the stains were applied, I spread out the scraps on newspaper under a lamp to speed up the drying process (it took overnight to air-dry sufficiently). Once dry, the material had a color realistic to the prototype photos. The paper will become stiff once dry so this will aid in the construction of the actual gon-load base. The debris result is seen below with a penny for HO size reference:
I made my load base for the gondola out of foam-core I picked up at the dollar store. I wanted the load to be removable so I cut the foam-core to be a little smaller than the opening of the inside of the gondola. I used shims made out of balsa strips to have the foam-core sit about 3/16" under the top sill of the gondola so that the debris would not rise too high out of the car. The shape of the load does not need to have an exaggerated tapered shape like a coal load; it just needs to bend down slightly on the sides, but you can create that look with the shredded scraps themselves. I painted the foam core black so that I did not have to worry about covering every inch of the foam board with debris. Once that was done, I started adding the debris with full-strength white glue. I also glued individual strips of balsa wood within the debris for visual interest.Once the glue dried, I then went for a dusty look and heavily applied a mixture of white and light-brown powdered chalks. You can then spray the load with dull cote to seal everything in place and then apply more chalks as needed.
There is still one final step. Most of these construction loads I've studied have orange safety netting over the construction debris to keep it from flying off during transit. I bought orange tulle at Michael's arts and crafts store for about four bucks and this simulates the netting very well. I have the tulle pictured below:
At 6"x25 yards, your four dollars will be a lifetime investment for your loads. If you have way too much extra, spray it with gray auto-primer and use it for chain-link fencing. You want to cut the tulle slightly larger than your load and lay it over the top of it.Pull the ends taught over it but not too much; we still want to see some slack in the netting. When you pull the ends tight, tuck them under the load and tape them well to the bottom of the foam-core load.
And that's that. The finished results are pictured below and I believe they look much like the real thing.
And here's a close up:
So that is a way for you to make construction debris loads for your gondolas. Although it is hard to take pictures which do the actual look of these loads justice, I can assure you this method works. If you'd like to see other pictures for better views or more information on the process please let me know, but in the mean time, I hope you give this method a try for your layout's gondola load needs. It is cheap, easy, fast and good looking-- if you ask me, that's a recipe for success in this hobby. Feel free to comment. Thanks for reading!
Modeling the Long Island Rail Road & New York and Atlantic Railway
