ExactRail Southern Pacific 2420 Cu. Ft. Gondola.

These cars were buily in 1965 by Gunderson Brothers and given the SP class 100-7. They were in the number series 333500 - 334655. In 1985 65 of the cars recieved a re-build and were numbered 800000 - 800064. ExactRail have just released a re-run of this car in the 800000 number series. See this web site for photo's and details.

My car is from the first run and has panels for the Southern Pacific name and car data. The ExactRail product page for this car is here. I have not seen a prototype photo of one of these cars with these panels so decided to remove them and re-number the car as part of the weathering process. They are only tacked on and are easily removed from the sides.

One of the interesting things about this car is the side construction with the dimples. On prototype cars with these side the dimples show through to the inside. On the model the inside is smooth. Because of this I decided to load the car to hide the interior sides. After weathering the car I put it aside for a while to decide what sort of load to use.

Where I work has a machine shop with a number of lathes and milling machines and while talking to one of the machinists my eyes fell upon the swarf being generated by the machine. I was immediately struck by the fact that this could look good as shredded scarp. So I scooped some up and brought it home. One of the immediate issues was that the scrap you see in gondolas is rusty, whereas this swarf was not. Mother nature to the rescue. I simply put some in a plastic container wet it and left it outside to be naturally weathered. Drill a couple of small holes in the bottom of the container because, although you want moisture on the steel you also need air. In a couple of days I went back to check and found I had a nicely rusted load.

As I didn't want to completely fill the car I made a false floor about half way up the car out of styrene which I painted a rail brown colour. Then I covered this with a thick coating of white glue and poured the scrap over it, gently tapping it into the glue until I was satified with the coverage.

This was left to set for a couple of days and then I gently spooned a diluted mix of white glue, water and a couple of drops of dishwashing liquid over the top, just like you do with ground cover scenery. Just like scenery this will not look too good but don't panic. Go away and come back a couple of days later once it has all dried out. You may find it has developed a slight gloss in places but this is easily fixed with a matt overspray. The overspray also helps to ensure a good seal as you don't want bits of metal floating around your layout. This shouldn't be a problem if you haven't loaded above the sides of the gondola and you have sealed it properly.