What type of goods did this type car carry, I have seen them listed as orc cars but can’t see how that would be possible with fixed sides, just came across 5 of the and am wondering what to load them with
Bill,
Maybe add some hinges and make them look like drop-side cars? To be honest, I have a couple of these and some of HLW’s versions and never thought about it…If it helps, I visited Danzig/Gdansk many years ago. On the train south to Marienburg/Malrbork, you could still see the rail systems of the old estates. These were probably meter gauge like lots of LGB’s gear. That would suggest an agricultural load would not be out of the question.
Eric
I’d use them on a logging railroad, pulled behind a shay, or small diesel as work material cars would look great filled with tools, block and tackle rigs, fuel, etc., of course you would need link and pin couplers and they would need to be dirty up a bunch with rust and the wood look rotted and weathered. I can’t see them used on U.S. railroad as they look stock in the pics, but a great car to re-build for logging, or mining.
trainman
What type of goods did this type car carry, I have seen them listed as orc cars but can’t see how that would be possible with fixed sides
Bill,
Open wagons with fixed sides were quite common on railroads. In Europe they were small 4-wheel cars, and in the USA they were big 8-wheel gondolas. The latter were often known as “coal Cars” and the contents were shoveled in and out by hand. To avoid too much hard work, chutes would load them with ore and the unload was often a tipper:
(Wikipedia) In the mining industry, the long established standard for dumping mine cars was to run them into horns at the ends of the rails at the tipple. The inertia of the car would cause it and sometimes a short segment of hinged rail to tip forward, dumping the load out the end of the car. Some of these dump mechanisms completely overturned the car end-for-end, and some allowed the car to continue onward after being dumped. In the 19th century, a patent was issued for a machine to tip entire railroad cars endwise for unloading.
My note: the ‘short section of hinged rail’ was often counter-balanced, so that after the load was dumped, the counter-weight lifted the car back up to level.
(Narrow Gauge & Short Line Gazette, May 1980.)
I load them up with whatever is handy.
Thanks Pete, very educational guess when labor was cheap, things were done cheap, Thanks again, Bill
John and Eric, again to you both thanks and John the cars are already pretty dirty, got them at the Deland train show, 5 of them and 2 home built log cars that were well built all for $5.00 they are not LGB but some off brand and I just couldn’t pass them up, Bill