Thanks Joe, for the footnotes clarifying what I was saying.  This article is not the end of the topic, but a starting point.

I am sure I missed many ways of weighting cars, and this thread is the place to continue the discussion.  Looking forward to other ideas.

For each idea, we want to examine what "shows" and what does not.

How much weight used is a footnote, not the main idea.  This discussion is HOW we add the weight, not the amount.  Each railroader has their own idea for amount, and it is right for each railroader's own fleet of cars.

Join in, everyone is welcome.

Nice article, James. In looking at flats I have been able to add lead to the underside to get the cars up to spec by cutting and fitting lead sheet into the spaces between the frame rails. Lead #9 shot will be even easier and I will begin doing that in the future.

After fooling with it for a while and buying stick on weights and cast metal ends etc., I have found US pennies to be cheaper than any other form of weight, can be delivered to your local bank for free and are non magnetic. For non closed cars I hide the lead shot.

Any cars I will buy are unassembled or they are kits I can disassemble to fix what was wrong with them. I have stopped buying the ready to disassemble cars even when they are cheaper.

I just recently checked intermountain's web site and they still list undecorated kits. So if one was so inclined decals trucks and couplers depending on the kits could still be purchased there. It would mean painting and decaling but it would be worth it to get a nice model and to get to build it yourself. Also there are the nice kits from F&C that are hard to beat for nice detail.

Five stars for you.

Pennies are a great choice for reefers, box cars, and cabooses. I discovered the hard way though that you really want to use a good thick glue like gorilla glue. If your car is completely sealed up when you are done with it and that stack of pennies breaks loose it is going to move around any time you have to pick the car up. Getting that loose weight to sit in the center of the car may be nearly impossible also. Then you have a car rolling around with a definite list. You can blame it on the really over weight conductor riding back there but you will always have a reminder running around to use a thicker glue.

As for N scalers and car weights, Back when my wife had a little 3 x 4 layout going she started putting an extra 1/2oz of weight in her cars and it made a huge difference in rolling and just staying on the track.

Jack

This article was a bit different for me, as Joe asked for something along these lines.  My other articles have all been me just doing them and sending them in to Joe, more or less (City of Miami I got approved a year before I sent it in though). (wait for Nov, and Dec 2015!).  Merit Badge Academy, i just sat down and wrote in only an hour or so after I unloaded my wife's photos.  That one just flowed out of me.

i did mention pennies as they seem to be a popular choice in the forum.  It has been hard the last 2 months or so to hold back on the forum because I knew this was coming.....  As for adding lead to the bottom of flats, my concern is how much will show.  The lead plate loads I have now are not glued down, so I can pick them off at the "delivery" point.  The same for the Gondola loads.

For my future layout, I'm thinking of a coal mine (I have 40 coal hoppers with removable loads) going to a steel mill, where the coal is unloaded and the flats are loaded with steel sheets and maybe a final destination of a shipyard to deliver the steel plate to.  Also, the gondolas can pick up pipe loads and steel beams and also deliver to the shipyard.  And to make it work, the Ic, my chosen railroad, was a major shipper of coal!  And some shipyard stuff was at the one end - New Orleans too.

Due to ongoing MBA sessions, my wife has earned her Volunteer AP certificate, and with the Dec 2015 issue will finish her author cert as well.  In this article, 1 of the photos was taken by her - which 1?

(For reference, we now both have volunteer and Dec will give us both Author - my author came after the City of Miami article alone.)

Picking nits with the table and graph in the article.  In this context, anything beyond one or two decimal place is superfluous. And some units for the weight (and length in the chart) would be appropriate.  I mention this not only for good engineering practice, but to point put that "stuff like that" (apologies to Quincy Jones) can also freak out new comers.

Well, the 6 decimal places was the default of Excel, and never bothered to change it - laziness on my part I suppose.  The length is listed in the headers as "inches" or "feet".  The weight should have said "Ounces".

Since I reference back to the NMRA weights, 1 could assume that I am using the same measures, but I will state here that I used inches and ounces.

Anyway, you have a point and not only did I mess up, but it got past all the proofreaders too.  However, I don't think it will scare off the newcomers, as it is a side part of the main article.

Open car loads could be weighted (which you mention). Taking into account Joe's note, you could mark the bottom of the load with how much it weighs. Now you have loads of different weights, and you can tell how much by looking at them. Now the question becomes...how do you tell which cars need how much weight?

It occurs to me that many modelers will renumber cars in order to make sure that no more than one has the same number. Perhaps you might use the last digit to specify how much weight an open top car needs? For example, Car number 201354 means that it needs (at least) a quarter oz, so you would weight it with a load weighted at a quarter oz. Car 201352 would need a half oz, load. In this case the number 4 means quarter, and the 2 means half. You could use two numbers so that 14 is quarter, 12 is half, and 34 is three quarter. You could also use 25, 50 & 75. Whatever numbering scheme works best for you.

You could have several versions of the same load, each weighted differently, so that any one of them could be used in any car needing the appropriate weight. This also means that you could mix and match, as long as the total weight is what the car needs. Now, this doesn't do anything for empty cars, but then an empty car isn't generating any revenue, so if a load can be put on the car, I would think the railroad would try to do it.

 beyond is to combine your idea with mine about different loads at different industries on the layout.  Also, the idea of different loads appears to be the subject of an article next month, but by another author.

Flat cars tend to always be too light.  So, how do you add weight without adding a "load" of some sort.  What I have done is to use sheet lead (leftover roof flashing) and "cut and fit" the lead to fit in all the spaces under the floor area.  Flat cars are low to the rails so unless you pick up the car and look at it, you won't know it's there.  I will try to post a couple of photos of some of my flat cars in the next couple days.

Nelson, I have done the same thing and it works well. I have recently been trying number 9 lead shot attached with white glue to the under side of the car and it seems to work well also. It is easier to install than cutting and fitting the lead sheet.

We have a lot of cars on the club layout weighted with white glue and lead shot. Some are getting on in years (10-15 years), and the white glue has contracted enough that bits of shot fall out. Or, the whole glued blob. Household silicone adhesive and lead sheet seems to last longer.

The URL is http://www.intermountain-railway.com not intermountain.com (health insurance site)

Looks like truncation to me.  Wonder if I just didn't copy the whole thing or what?  This error is mine, as it was that way in what I passed to MRH.  Of course, I think the intermountain-railway website is more interesting than a healthcare site, but YYMV.

There can be up to 1000 links in an issue, so to save time, we have an automated tester that just looks to see the link does not get an error like a 404, 500, etc.

We manually check all ads, of course, as well as all media. When it comes to links in articles, as long as the link is valid, we may or may not test it manually. When we send the author their PDF proof, we expect them to click on all links to make sure it goes where they expected (we can't read their mind, you know) ... if they don't test all links, then shame on them, it's their content and they ought to know better than anybody!