More on open-car loads

In this blog, I have written numerous times about building loads and adapting commercial loads for use on my layout. I like to have both mainline movements, and also cars destined on my branch line, that are era- and locale-appropriate. 

A constantly used and continuing load type is lumber, destined to team tracks in any of my towns, because in the 1950s lumber was being shipped in prodigious quantities for the nationwide building boom of the period. Of course rough lumber, used widely in construction, usually traveled on flat cars, but when flat cars were not available, the Southern Pacific used gondolas. Accordingly, I enjoy operating loads of that kind. (To view past blog posts about this topic, you can use “lumber loads” as the search term in the search box at upper right.)

As I’ve reviewed, the Owl Mountain Models kit no. 3004, intended for narrower loads that will fit into gondolas, makes a very nice load. (See the review at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/04/lumber-owl-mountains-recent-kit.html ; for availability and price of this kit, you can visit Owl Mountain Models at: http://owlmtmodels.com/ ). 

Below you see SP Ten-wheeler 2344, having just run around the gondola, preparing to switch SP 95068 with its lumber load to the team track in Santa Rosalia. The gondola was built from a Detail Associates kit.

A load I have enjoyed operating for over 40 years is a Euclid scraper. I built it from a Stewart white metal kit, and the hard part was mixing paint for Euclid’s distinctive green. I showed the AAR loading diagram for this vehicle previously (available at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/05/vehicle-loading-on-flat-cars.html ). Here it’s ready to be switched at Shumala on my layout, riding today on 53-foot SP 140558 (a Red Caboose kit).

Another kind of load that is good for lots of destinations an op session is electrical equipment. I have a several small models of such equipment, and usually move them in a gondola, with different kinds of blocking. 

In the view below, switcher 1423 has run around its train, and is about to spot the gondola, C&O 44917, on the team track at Ballard. (I described this car in an earlier post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-richard-hendrickson-gondola-part-2.html .) 

Another load that gets used fairly regularly is a shipment of four heavy I-beams, painted with red lead and steel-banded, with intermediate wood spacers. I didn’t build this, it’s a commercial load. You see it below spotted on the team track in my town of East Shumala, loaded in 53-foot Erie gondola 14506, a kitbashed model by Richard Hendrickson, on which he experimented with suggesting denting of side panels with blobs of CA cement, which I’d call an only somewhat successful idea.

Lastly, like most modelers, I enjoy the loads carried on depressed-center flat cars. Below in a train passing Shumala is a General Electric transformer (from Multi-Scale Digital) loaded on Erie 7265, a ClassOne Model Works product (see my review at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/10/the-new-class-one-flat-car.html ), sandwiched between SFRD 35719, a Class RR-32 reefer built by Richard Hendrickson, and caboose SP 1253, a 1947-built Class C-30-4 caboose with its as-delivered vermilion ends (a Precision Scale brass model)

All these are just examples of open-car loads, but they do illustrate the kinds of loads I have enjoyed creating, and the ways they can be operated

Tony Thompson