Open Machinery Loads

[sapacif]

I was going to put this in the Bashing list, but this is peculiar to N scale. Dick Billings of Fine N Scale came up with this idea. For a machinery open load, go to the O scale lost wax castings/brass steam details section. Take one of those huge cylinder/air pushing parts, paint it and set it up with wood cribbing. Then tie it down to a flat car or one of those beat up gondolas. Sorry I don't have a better picture. When someone asks you, "What is that load," you can tell them that you have no idea!

The load is in the gondola on the right. The gondola on the left has an I beam load.

 

[Tyson Rayles]

Looks like a air compressor to me. Makes a great load!

 

[Clerk]

First, Welcome to the Gauge Flash. Nothing wrong with the picture. Everything looks great but what is that hiding behind the caboose?

 

[sapacif]

Dick:

Good question. I think that we are looking at the end of one of the Fine N Scale crushed auto stacks. All of this was under construction at the time I took the picture about a year ago. The I beam load car is one of the N Scale of Nevada steel mill gons. That one is several years old, but it ws the first kit I ever made where I put all those hand grabs, ladders, etc. on the car. Even the couplers were body mounted. It was a nice kit; it made me start bashing my other cars to look better. The I beam load is too high and probably not prototypical for such a car. It was so much fun making it that I couldn't stop and the load got higher and higher!

 

[Clerk]

Flash, I also like your junk pile on the far right. It looks so real.

 

[sapacif]

The junk pile is scratchbuilt. I just take a piece of styrene the size of the area I want the junk to cover. Then I stack misc pieces of anything on it. This is where you get creative. You can cut up specific things (axles, trucks, etc.) or, you can cut up anything (Lightbulbs, ladders, strip styrene, cloth, wire,etc.). Then I use diluted white glue (50-50) and glue it to the styrene. Spray it with light earth/rust. After that, I usually try to use chalks or acrylics to make highlights. In the picture above, the worm gears are from a Bachmann. I think you can also see truck frames that I cut off. You could also sort it by type so that the junk yard guys look like they know what they are doing.