A Richard Hendrickson freight car

After Richard passed away in 2014, I inherited most of his modeling projects and materials, along with all his unbuilt kits and existing freight car fleet. As some readers may remember, I conducted on-line auctions to sell the kits and some brass freight cars, while the Santa Fe Society handled an auction of his Santa Fe brass locomotives and passenger cars. I also handled gifting over 100 of Richard’s freight cars to many of his friends and associates.

[For anyone who does not know, or has forgotten, who Richard Hendrickson was, it might be of interest to read the memorial essay of tribute I wrote after he passed away in June 2014. That essay can be found here: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2014/07/in-memoriam-richard-hendrickson.html .]  

A couple of his unfinished freight car projects could be completed with a reasonable amount of effort, such as his very interesting Santa Fe Class FE-25 automobile car (the concluding post in my description of that project is here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2018/11/hendrickson-auto-car-part-6.html ). More recently, I completed his model of a Georgia Railroad USRA box car that had been rebuilt (read my description here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2024/07/another-hendrickson-project.html ).

Another project to come to light was his partly converted gondola to be a C&O car. I know what he intended, because both a photo and decals were with the model. Here is the photo Richard had with this project. Evidence that I mention below indicates that this is an AC&F builder photo.

What was the prototype background? From 1930 to 1937, the Chesapeake & Ohio purchased 5000 new steel gondolas, with steel solid floors and fixed ends, numbered 40000–44999. The last 1000, built by AC&F, had different ends, changing from an angled heap shield to an oval one, as you see above. These were remarkably durable cars. In 1953, the year I model, the Official Railway Equipment Register or ORER shows 3974 out of 4000 cars with the angled heap shields, and 996 of the 1000 with oval shields. Only 30 out of 5000 cars had left the roster in the intervening 20 or so years. 

Below is a Cycopedia builder photo (again, by AC&F). These 40-foot, 70-ton gondolas with 9 side ribs have a distinctive appearance.

One way these cars can readily be modeled is the way Richard was doing, using the old Roundhouse metal high-side gondola. It was a cast white-metal kit. His model has at least the Roundhouse sides and floor, held together with small screws. He modified the Dreadnaught ends, and added the distinctive rounded C&O “heap shields” with styrene. The sides have the correct rivet rows inside to match the rib locations. Richard had added brass drop grab irons to the B end.

He also had built a fairly complete underbody, re-locating the brake gear from the Roundhouse original positions (you can see the scars below) and adding all rodding and also the lever carrier hangers. However, he chose to omit most of the piping, something I usually do too. The one thing he had not done on the underbody was to replace the Roundhouse narrow coupler boxes.Here you can clearly see the characteristic Roundhouse screw attachment of sides to floor, at each corner.

The B end of the car needs a brake platform and brake wheel, along with grab irons. I will continue with this project and complete the model, including a decision about the coupler boxes, then attend to paint and decals, followed by weathering.

Tony Thompson