When you need a lot of coal loads --- You need to get them cheap!

For awhile now I've been interested in coal loads.  Yes, overall I've been interested in coal hauling by rail, but I've also enjoyed seeing and photographing different types of coal loads with the hopes of someday modeling them.

Not all coal loads are created equal.  Although some, such as flood loads, look very much the same from car to car, others vary greatly.  Flood-loaded cars are very consistently loaded over a period of a couple of minutes per car and usually have a flat profile on top.  Loads from single-car loadouts, where cars are often rolled, pushed, or pulled under the loader, may have more humps and varying profiles.  Loads from front-end loaders or dozer loading operations are the most varied and inconsistent that I've seen.

Coal also moves inside the car as it is shipped over its journey of hundreds or thousands of miles.  The load inside a car leaving a loadout in West Virginia may look very different when it arrives at a power plant in North Carolina.

Some prototype reference photos

 

I would suspect this car was loaded by front-end loaders, based on the sloppy mound profile of the load.

This CSXT car came from a flood-loader, but the operator piled up some excess coal at one end.  Quite a few years ago I had an opportunity to load a few cars at an actual flood loader, and there is an art to it.  It's all in the timing of the start-up and shut-off of the coal flow as the car creeps under the loader.

A string of loads on NS at Flat Top, WV, shows some of the variety possible.

Flood-loaded coal can create a nice consistent profile.

Creating inexpensive loads for model hoppers


I have several different loading locations on the CR&E and K&N, so I want to model different types of loads.  I have some commercial loads that I've bought over the years, but they're expensive and they are often just too consistent.  A train of 24 Atlas 90-ton hoppers shouldn't all have the same Atlas factory two-hump load.  Some of the companies that produce aftermarket loads for cars really do a nice job and do vary the appearance of their loads.  The drawback is that you can spend a fortune loading all of the hoppers on a coal-hauling railroad.

A few years ago, as an experiment, I quickly made a load out of some black foam-type packing material that I had.   I trimmed the piece of material to size, gave it an appropriate profile with scissors, and stuffed it in a coal hopper.  It's been running on the railroad for several years now, and nobody has once said, "Hey, look at that foam load."  I'm not sure anyone has ever really noticed it.  Every time I see it pass by me on a train though, I think it's a nice-looking coal load.  It also happens to be free!


It turns out I'm not the only person who has used this type of material for loads.  I found several other examples when I did a search on the internet.  I decided to go out and try to find some of this material for cheap so I could cut it up and start making some loads, since I only had one piece of packing material.  What I found was some insulating material for stuffing around window air conditioners, and it turned out to be just what I needed.  Cut into pieces and trimmed appropriately, I could get a whole lot of coal loads for about $3 and some of my time and creativity.

Shown above is some of the packaging material I had on-hand.  This stuff can be cut up and used for profiled coal loads.

Above is a standard Atlas 90-ton coal hopper with the stock two-hump load in it.  I've enhanced a few of these loads by painting them or spreading glue and coal dust on top of them, but as nice as they really do look, too many of them just looks wrong.

The first step is to cut some of the packing material and to begin stuffing it into the hopper, then trimming it down so it will fit appropriately.  I used the humped part of the material in hopes of getting some profile out of it, but it was just too big for N Scale.  I just trimmed it back to make various profiles for the cars.

Here is the same car with its new load.  In person, the foam looks fine just as it is.  There's a bit of a sheen to the load that makes it look realistic.  I may follow the lead of others though and try painting some of these with black spray paint to see what looks better.  This load represents the work of a single-car loader.  Varying the loads and making them more "sloppy" can give them the appearance of a dozer-loading operation.

 The Trainworx 100-ton four-bay hopper, which looks really good, comes with a smooth plastic load that represents a flood load.  It could be dressed up with some coal dust, but I decided to make a load for it too.

Above is the same car with the new load that I made.  I trimmed the material to size and shaped it randomly.  This load is pretty neat but not quite perfect for a flood-load.  Perhaps it was flood-loaded by an operator who wasn't real good with the loading controls.  It happens (see the CSXT car in the prototype photos above.)

If you don't have any packaging material around, you can buy this air conditioner insulating seal at home improvement or discount stores.  I bought this back at WalMart for $3.  It is sold as a 42" long square, which makes it ideal for representing the flat tops of flood loads.  Trimmed irregularly, it could also be used for other types of loads.

BLMA's beautiful Top Gon comes with great interior detail but does not come from the factory with a load.  In front of the car is a piece of the insulating seal material trimmed to the correct size to fit into the car.

Here the load has been trimmed on the ends at approximately 45 degree angles with scissors.  I trim and blend the angled ends of the loads into the flat top surface.  Of course this load is entirely too tall now, so I'll trim it some more.

With the sides also trimmed at an appropriate angle with scissors, the load now looks much better.  The top of the load is relatively flat to represent flood-loaded coal.  The ends and sides have been trimmed and blended together.  Again, I may spray paint these loads black to make them look a little more solid, but in person I like the bit of realistic shimmer that comes off the load.

Here are several cars that have been "loaded" with the insulating material.   The loads in the Top Gons are all intended to represent a flood-loading operation, while the loads in the 3-bay hoppers represent manual loading at single-car operations or front-end-loader operations.  I'm pleased with the way these look, and the cost, and I hope operators will appreciate the different styles of loads.

I plan to somehow label the undersides of the loads so I will know which cars they go into.  I will likely also sort and label the loads to represent the different loadouts on the railroad.  Clear Fork and Sam Creek are flood-loaders, Crawley is a small single-car loader, Ajax #1 is an old tipple, and Ajax#2 and Spring Branch are sidings with front-end-loader operators loading cars.  I hope that people will be able to tell the difference, but if they can't at least I know I will!

Making time for the layout --- and Sam Creek Branch (K&N District) update

As usual immediately following an operating session, I experienced a few days of motivation, ready to run the railroad again.  I like to use this time to accomplish some of the restaging work, since that can be last-minute drudgery getting ready for an operating session.  I need to discipline myself to basically restage the entire railroad immediately after a session, giving me the next two months to do other things.  I've seen others do that, in fact restaging shortly after everyone goes home on the night of an operating session.  I must learn from Mr. Beck and others.

Following the period of intense motivation, sometimes without much progress, I then fall into about a week or two of not really wanting to do much with the layout.  Walk in the room, turn the lights on, look at all the nice locomotives and freight cars sitting around, admire the track work, visualize some scenery, look at the growing number of projects to complete, turn the light off, close the door, and return to my comfortable chair for the evening.  That's how it goes night after night for awhile, with an occasional night of actually accomplishing something.

My "secret" to making decent progress is to accomplish a little bit every night.  Obviously from what I've just written above, I don't always follow my own philosophy.  However, when the heat was really on and I needed to have an operating railroad by February 2010, and I didn't start until November 2008, I used this philosophy extensively.   With work and family commitments, as well as all the other things that I like to do outside of the railroad room, large chunks of time often are not available.  It was common for me to start projects at 9PM and wrap up by 11PM almost every night, forging ahead a little at a time.

The blocks of time are smaller now, but the heat is also off.  Now what I accomplish is just additional progress that I can share with others when they visit the layout.  No long do I "have" to do something in order to make the railroad functional.  If 15, 30, or 45 minutes are available a night, using those minutes as many nights as possible will net a great deal of progress with only small amounts of time spent.

Last night I spent about 30 minutes gluing down a few feet of cork roadbed for the Sam Creek Branch extension on the Kessler & Northern District.  Tonight, I spent perhaps the same amount of time, maybe a little bit longer, gluing down the track on top of that new roadbed.  As a result, after only a little more than an hour's work spread out over two evenings, I now have a short passing siding and storage track for coal just up the creek from the Sam Creek Prep Plant and loadout.  The trackage, known as Ryder Siding and the old Ryder tipple (now abandoned), will be used by the shifter crews to stash loads or empties out of the way while working at the Sam Creek Prep Plant.

The subroadbed is installed for the remainder of the Sam Creek Branch, and now I'm waiting on some turnouts to arrive so I can continue the progress.  The subroadbed and risers were a Sunday afternoon project this past weekend, accomplished again in a just a few short hours of time available between other activities.

Sam Creek should be an interesting place for K&N District crews.  There will be a two-track yard for inbound raw coal coming from surrounding loaders.  A track to the car dumper will also be used to store the company's mine critter (an as yet undetermined locomotive model that will probably be ridiculously out of place and era, as real-world mine critters can be).   K&N crews will spot loads and pull empties from the raw coal storage yard, while the critter will handle moving cars out of that yard to the car dumper. 

In addition to the raw coal yard, there will be a track for flood-loading unit trains and shorter trains with prepped coal.  K&N crews will spot half of an empty unit train under the loader and leave the other half at Ryder Siding.  The mine critter will flood-load the cars under the loader and will take them to Ryder Siding, where they will drop those cars off and shove the other cut to the loader.  Once those cars are loaded, the critter will leave them under the loadout and clear up in the dumper track.   A K&N crew will come to Ryder, couple up to cars left there, then shove back to the other cars under the loader to build the unit train.  After the train is doubled together, the crew will continue to Meadow Bluff and then on to Lewisburg with the unit train.

A wooden bridge located between Ryder Siding and the prep plant will restrict the power used on that portion of the branch to four-axle power only.  For that reason, the Sam Creek Prep Plant's critter will handle the loading of the unit train.  When mainline power arrives to take the train to its destination, that power will not need to cross the wooden bridge.  The K&N job delivering raw coal to Sam Creek will need to be powered by four-axle units.  This will add some operational interest and a reason for the mine critter to do work.

I have not yet decided how to handle the simulated loading and unloading of cars at Sam Creek.  I'm thinking that, in my role as Trainmaster during the session, I will "load" and "unload" the cars by placing or removing loads in them during a lull time in the session. 

I'm pretty enthused about this portion of the K&N becoming operational.   I envision two or three K&N jobs working there during a typical operating session.  Early in a session, a light engine move should run to the Sam Creek Branch to double together and pick up a unit train that was loaded "last night."  Later, the raw coal job should arrive with loads from the mines and should pull empties from the raw coal receiving yard.  These empties should be delivered to the mines on the way back.  Finally, an empty train could be brought to Sam Creek by another K&N job, with half the train being spotted at the loadout and the other half stored at Ryder Siding.  In addition to the K&N jobs, the activity of the prep plant's company locomotive, which will have rights to use the entire Sam Creek Branch, will make it more interesting.   Operations will vary, as a unit train may not load everyday.