Another Dry Creek ballast car

Around a decade back, Robert Bowdidge initiated a line of 3D-printed HO scale SP freight cars, under the name Dry Creek Models. The business is has been in suspension for awhile, but I recently got around to finishing the second of two models of the Hart Convertible gondola design of the Rodger Ballast Car Company, as produced by Dry Creek. For anyone interested, I did a review of the kits when they were first introduced (that post is at this link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-new-dry-creek-sp-work-cars.html ).  

As part of that description, I showed the two body styles offered in the kits, one with the center-dumping doors open, and one with the them closed, the latter arrangement making a flat-bottom gondola. Below is a repeat of a photo from that post, illustrating the two body styles; the one I built at that time is the lower body, with center-dumping doors open.

In describing my build of the center-dumping car, I mostly showed how it looked when completed, as one only has to add grab irons, sill steps, vertical-staff handbrake, brake cylinder, and trucks and couplers (you can see that post here: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/09/building-dry-creek-ballast-cars.html ). 

In turning to the flat-bottom car, one might wonder how a car without ends might be used. Robert may have been inspired, and my goal was to model, something like the prototype photo below. It depicts unloading of rail from a Rodger gondola during the 1910 upgrading of the San Francisco Peninsula trackage from 70–pound to 90–pound rail (Southern Pacific photo).

It is interesting to note how many lengths of rail are visible in the car. In this and a second photo, at least 78 rail ends can be identified; two are on the ground and two more are being pulled from the car. Since this is 90–pound rail, we know that a 39-foot length of it weighs 1170 pounds. The nominal capacity of these 50-ton gondolas would therefore accommodate 85 lengths of rail, and this means that the photo was taken as unloading was beginning.

Work on the Dry Creek car body was simple, as described above. I used Westerfield grab irons and A-Line sill steps, along with a Cal-Scale K brake cylinder and a Cal-Scale brake wheel on a brass wire staff (as I described in a previous post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2023/05/small-project-replacing-brake-wheels.html ). 

The model was washed with soap and dried, then painted with Tamiya “Fine Surface Primer — Oxide Red.” I added Kadee #158 whisker couplers in their own boxes and Kadee Vulcan trucks. Though the cars had Andrews trucks when new, in later years a variety of replacement cast-steel trucks were installed, such as Vulcans. Here’s the model at this point, awaiting lettering and weathering, plus creation of a load of rail.

My next step was lettering. I chose to locate the car number and initials on the side, as was often done after World War II, with only the capacity and other data on the side sill. Once lettering was complete, and a coat of clear flat had been applied, I weathered the car with my usual acrylic wash technique (for both a description of the technique, and a range of examples, see the “Reference pages” linked at the top right corner of this post).

With the car now ready for use in an operating session, I only (!) need to make the rail load. I will return to that in a future post.

Tony Thompson