AC Covered Steel Coil Gondolas

One of the interesting variations of gondolas operated by the Algoma Central was their group of 52′ gondolas modified for steel coil service. These cars were outfitted with internal wooden bunks for loading the coils of sheet steel and three piece round steel covers to protect the contents from the elements. These covers were painted bright yellow, which on top of the standard black ACR gondola made for an eye-catching appearance. (Although as the covers got banged up during handling, they began to rust quite heavily and some later photos show hoods on some cars that are almost uniformly brown.)

AC 903 coil steel service gondola at Winnipeg, MB in the 1990s. James A. Brookman photo.

All told there were a total of 45 cars in this service by the mid 1980s. Roster listings are a little messy, but it appears the first 25 cars numbered 900-924 were delivered new by National Steel Car in December 1961. A total of 20 additional cars would be drawn from the 601-875 series for conversion in the late 1970s-early 1980s and renumbered 925-934 and 975-984. (Some notes in Official Railway Equipment Registers in the mid-late 1980s also show an additional 10 cars within the 601-875 series marked out as being fitted with coil bunks but not covers, and maintaining their original numbers.)

SeriesAAR Mech.BuiltNote
900-924GBSR
12/61New
925-934GBSR12/57ex-601-875;
converted between 1980-84
975-984GBSR12/57ex-601-875;
converted 1979-80

As these cars are quite visually distinctive, and important to steel products service on my mid 1980s era layout, I’ve long wanted to model some of these, and have kicked around some ideas for scratchbuilding the hoods out of styrene tube, or styrene sheet wrapped around a former, but never got around to actually building any yet.

A couple of years ago however, I acquired an Elegoo Saturn 3D printer, and decided that these coil hoods might be well suited to that application. I drew up the designs from photos and was able to print out the hoods for several cars.

The hoods were printed in three pieces similar to the real ones, including the reinforcing ribs and stacking brackets as part of the print. The crane lifting brackets on the tops of the hoods were soldered together from brass wire and small bits cut from .005″ brass sheet.

After completion, the hoods were primed and then painted yellow and installed on the cars. My 52′ gondola models are all from Rapido Trains, as they are the only ones that correctly match the spacing and number of side ribs, but the hoods fit other models of 52′ gondola as well. Two cars were painted from undecorated models using decals from Precision Design Co. which match the more rounded billboard lettering style on the lower numbered 900 series cars, while the rest of the cars were factory painted Rapido cars with just renumbering into 900 series numbers, which represent nicely cars renumbered from the 601-875 series.

My fleet of AC coil steel gons now stands at seven, a respectable number which should cover my operational needs quite nicely when combined with some CN and CP coil cars. Now all that remains is some weathering, and a proper layout to run them on!

CP Napanee Industries Coil Steel Cars

As the large Algoma Steel plant in Sault Ste. Marie is arguably the primary industry on the Algoma Central Railway in any era, steel traffic forms a major part of the tonnage carried by the railway, and included in that is “coil” steel (as far as I know, the only major steel product not produced by the Algoma mill is wire). Thin sheet steel is wound into coils that are shipped out to manufacturing plants across the continent to be turned into all manner of steel products.

To transport this valuable cargo by rail, the rail industry developed cars with V-shaped wood-lined loading troughs to transport the coils without damaging them. Some of these cars were flatcars or gondolas with the loading troughs added, but by the 1960s several builders were producing various specially designed cars for coil steel service.

Note – There seems to be a bit of a gray area in whether or not to class these special cars as flats or gondolas – indeed today most of the modern equivalents are now pretty universally considered as gons (“GBSR” AAR designation), and while many identical cars were also classed as “GBSR” by their owning roads, the cars I’m about to discuss were classed (at least initially) as “FMS” by both CN and CP.

A major builder and innovator of this type of design – a coil car with lengthwise loading troughs, removable hoods, tracks for moveable load restraint bars, and cushioned underframe to protect the contents – was Evans Products which built hundreds of these cars for most of the major American railways. A minority builder was Canada’s Napanee Industries (NI) of Napanee, ON which built a total of 75 cars in 1967 following the Evans design (probably under license for the Canadian market) for Canadian National (25 cars – CN 190200-190224) and Canadian Pacific (50 cars – CP 313500-313549).

CP 313533 in October 1970 in original as-delivered black with script logos. Jim Parker photo.

A model representing the Evans Products coil car was and is produced in HO by Walthers. (A very similar US Railway Equipment car is produced by Intermountain (formerly Red Caboose tooling) but the body is different and has a straight sill). The Walthers car is somewhat of an older model, dating back to when Walthers actually sold their cars as kits (and I picked up a 3-pack of kits quite a number of years ago that lived for a [long] time on my shelf), but with a few upgrades these can still make respectable models, and an easy kitbash to one of the Napanee cars.

The first thing to do to the Walthers model is to cut away the original walkway and throw it out. Not only is this part rather thick and crude by today’s standards, the Napanee cars did not have the full-length side walkways featured on the model. I also carved off moulded grab irons and stirrup steps to replace them with finer wire parts.

To cover the holes left by the walkway supports and seam between the body halves, rather then trying to fill and sand body putty along the length of the body between the upper and lower flanges (or to be more honest, trying and giving up), I simply laminated 0.005″ styrene sheet cut to fit to the car side to get a smooth result.

Pre-paint construction photo.

Since the NI cars didn’t have full walkways, the removable hoods did not have lengthwise handrails on them either, which the Wathers model has. This is a pretty simple matter to carve off the handrail supports and sand them smooth. At the same time I took the opportunity to replace the corner grabs on the hoods with wire. Otherwise the hoods are essentially “stock” with all the kit parts, although I did scratchbuild matching hoods using the kit part as a pattern for a fourth car that had come with rounded hoods…

Wire grabs were mounted to the body, and step handrails also added from brass wire. The walkway grating on the ends of the cars was added using Plano etched material. The final modification is a small triangle of styrene strip angling from the side sill outboard of the trucks to the bottom of the main body, and a small loop of brass wire representing a protective guard around the brake control valve on the side.

Painting and lettering the cars is where things get a little interesting, as there’s no specific decal sets available. I built and painted two cars for CP, one in original black and one in red (2 more cars for CN are still in the paint shop).

CP 1979 “Action Red” car painted but unlettered.

The red CP car was painted and lettered following a prototype photo of
freshly painted CP 313500 on pg. 99 of “Canadian Pacific Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment: Volume 2” by John Riddell and published by Morning Sun Books. This shows a car in a 1970s repaint.

The car and hoods were sprayed with Rapido ProtoPaint “CP Action Red”, and then masked off to paint the underside of the car and the draft gear black. Also the multimarks on the hoods were custom masked and painted as no decal was exactly the right size. The rest of the lettering was cobbled primarily from a Highball gondola set (although almost any CP Rail freight car decal would work as a source) and some Microscale consolidated stencils. The prototype was a 1979 repaint, so no ACI label is present on this car. Numbers and data were painstakingly put together with a magnifying visor.

Two CP cars painted and lettered.

The black car consumed no less than three sets of Black Cat decals – 2 sets of a gondola with script lettering (CPR340998) for the hood logos and end reporting marks, and a skeleton “stake” flatcar (CPR305560) set for the correct size reporting marks and numbers. This provided ample data to work with. Incidental decals such as ACI labels and consolidated stencils were added from Highball and Microscale sets. As these are 100-ton cars, U-1 wheel dots do not apply.

Perhaps if I were doing a larger set of these cars in the future I might commission a custom set of specific decals, but I was able to piece enough of it together from existing sets.

The cars still need to be sealed and weathered, but for now the paint and lettering work is for the most part completed on these two CP cars. Hopefully the CN fleet will have its pair completed soon as well.

Freight Car Friday #40 – WC 62630

SAMSUNG DIGIMAX 360

A bit older than the modern CN and CP cars recently pictured, although still a little outside my personal targeted mid-1980s modelling era, is this Wisconsin Central gondola for coil steel service.

Originally built for the SOO Line and acquired during WC’s startup in 1986, this car has unusually deep sides and covers to protect the coil steel load.

Similar WC covered gondolas would have been a common sight in Sault Ste. Marie during the 1990s.

Photo taken by myself in Sault Ste. Marie in August 2004.

Freight Car Friday #39 – GTW 187977

Today’s entry looks at a modern CN coil steel car.

IMG_7569

Photographed at Hawk Junction from the vestibule of the northbound passenger train, GTW 187977 is an example of one of several batches of modern cars built by National Steel Car for CN from 2006-2008 and assigned the reporting marks of CN’s subsidiary Grand Trunk Western. Currently there are a total of 890 of these NSC built cars from GTW 187400-188289, following 369 similar cars built in 2000-2003 with plain grey markings and CN numbers from CN 187000-187368.

Freight Car Friday #38 – FURX Coil Steel Gondolas

Today’s post features additional coil steel cars leased to Canadian Pacific, and commonly seen carrying steel coils eastward from Essar Steel Algoma over the Huron Central to interchange with CP at Sudbury.

These cars with FURX reporting marks are part of a group of 100 cars leased to Essar Steel Algoma from First Union Rail, the rail leasing and financing arm of First Union Bank. These cars were originally built by Alstom in 1999 as part of NOKL 380601-380850 series.

Officially the NOKL reporting marks are registered to the Northwestern Oklahoma Railroad, but in reality cars with the NOKL reporting mark are owned by First Union and leased to other railroads. Some of these NOKL (like these three here) have been re-marked to FURX and SMW (another First Union managed mark). I’m not sure why First Union sometimes transfers cars between their various marks (FURX, NDYX, NOKL and SMW) but I’m sure there is a organizing system to this in their accounting department and may or may not have something to do with whether a railroad or private operator is leasing the cars.

IMG_0572 IMG_8391 IMG_8392

Three photos taken by myself on two separate visits in 2013.

Recently, a group of these FURX/NOKL cars have been rotating through Ontario Northland Railway’s car shops in North Bay for inspection and repairs prior to lease return; they seem to be largely being replaced by the cars leased from CIT Group featured last week.