Georgia Road Tree-Hauler rack cars

[georgiaroad]

Recent locomotive projects have left me frustrated waiting on parts or painting, so I decided to work on rolling stock. I seem to have better luck, and I get a faster turn around in most cases.

Georgia Road, the Alabama Midland RR and the Florida & Gulf Coast railroads all are modern freelance regionals in the Deep South. Pulp and timber are still big business, but so much has left the rails for long distance trucking to the mills directly. Growing up, I was used to long cuts of short pulpwood on V deck pulpwood rack cars. I also saw a lot of GPSX skeleton and converted flat veneer log cars. I have intentions of modeling the log operations, and following the example of KCS plan to haul not only the 16ft veneer logs on racks, but also tree-length.

The profit margin on raw timber is low, and both CSX and NS have pretty much gutted the business as area paper mills are either adding on site chipping plants or recieving chips from sawmills or chipping plants proper. As a result, many timber companies have been forced to move tree length in order to make a living in the modern era. As fuel prices climbed over last summer, several of my logging acquaintances could not turn a profit due to the long hauls. I decided in my concept to have regional load outs that could assemble cuts of tree length logs much like the pulpwood yards used to do. These would reduce the need for long hauls, particularly if the mills opted to enforce strict delivery points near the timber stands. While this is one side of the marketing scheme, the other constitutes a large pool of cars that can move large amounts of wood at one time directly to chippers at the mill sites. Wisconsin Central took old Southern SIECO pulpwood racks and added bunkers for their version of long pulpwood. I decided to add a twist that is purely aimed at the way Deep South logging is addressed.

First, here is the prototype influence, the WC "Mega Log Hauler" that drawbars two cars into one large single load.




Credit goes to the WCL modelers forum for these pictures.
wc2scale.fotopic.net/

[georgiaroad]

These units are connected by drawbar, and ship as a single load. For my Deep South version, the bunkers were altered to fit those seen here. These cars can carry tree length or six sets of 16ft veneer logs.

[georgiaroad]

I used plastruct solid square rods with a .125 thickness for my bunkers. Using a NWSL chopper, I could make the same cuts over and over in short time. These were glued with Testors plastic cement (black bottle with metal pipette tip). I have seen articles where brass tube stock was soldered together, but that is a lot of work and these can take a lot of abuse if dropped. I chamfered the bottom and top of the uprights with a dremel and set of jewelers files. You will notice the bunkers on each end of the two car set is squared. This represents the jacking pad which was removed from the stock car so the bunker would place correctly. I suppose a C shaped jig could be made to guarantee exact duplicate bunkers. I eyeballed them with good enough results. Also, I did have to notch the side sill overhang of the deck of the car so the bunker flushes to the side of the car.

Here is a diagram of how the bunkers were built... width is determined by the core car. I have used Custom Finishing skeleton kits, mill gons, pulwood rack cars and the NSC and Thrall type bulkhead cars.

[georgiaroad]

I had a couple of Walthers mill gons laying around, so a different type of cars was built here. Since the structural support of the gon sides was compromised, steel beams were run across the floor of the car to maintain a rigid car frame. This is before I stripped the car. I plan to paint them a solid darker color with minimal logos and data.

These are distinctive builds and not too hard. They also are very hearty cars that fill a void in my pulp and timber railcar fleet!

[antlorch]

You have a great imagination Hank and very good skills,I hope your plan comes together just as you want it to...........

[icghogger]

Great concept, Hank! Plus, you really don't need a large paper mill on your layout for such a fleet. A real life portable chip mill located trackside only occupies about 5-10 acres and can handle your log cars in and chip hoppers out. A small tower crane can radially stack the logs and feed the chipper when it is running. Shuler Brothers of Cantonement, FL uses such operations to bring the local wood supply close to rail and highway to keep shipping costs down.

[Jack Napier]

Nice to see the GARD and AMRR get into the pulpwood business.

[DRGW 5398]

I really like both cars, the double car is really interesting! Good job, can't wait to see photos of it when you get her finished!

CP9302, those cars look like the latest run of Walthers bulkhead cars.

[Freightrain]

How would this operate around curves if the load was full tree length?

[DRGW 5398]

Freighttrain, I was thinking the same thing when I first saw these photos! However, I think he means that they are used like intermodal well cars, connected by a drawbar, not loaded with a 100' tree that fills the entire car. I bet they load each like a single car, the load does not actually hang over the drawbar, they would have to leave a gap there otherwise they would not make a curve.

[DRGW 5398]

Just as I thought, here is a photo:

www.yardoffice.com/RR/Photos/FreightCars/WC035201.jpg

a lot of sense to me...cool prototype and model!

[DRGW 5398]

After looking at this photo closer I noticed a log near the top of car 35201A that has slid back against car B, seems like it would be dangerous to have a load sliding around like that!

[georgiaroad]

Ya'll probably wondered what happened to this model. Truth is, I was getting close enough to doing painting and had no real idea what the Georgia Road paint would look like. Add to that a hard semester and school and only now can I say I have cleared the hurtle of the final look.

The model is based off the WC prototype which uses SEICO 56' V deck pulpwood cars (the Walthers version). I had five from the very first run of undecs. Now two are set for this Tree-Train and two more will become container flat conversions. That is for another day!

The trouble with doing paint schemes is that you need a good template with which to work. I used Michael Eby's 1:55 drawings, though in many cases, he does not have the exact car or locomotive. I then have to redraw one of his, or use parts such as trucks and couplers to created a completely new drawing. The SIECO pulpwood car was one of those that I had to create, before I could modify the drawing and finally paint it up in the Georgia Road scheme. Now I have three, the original V-deck car, a single car with log bunkers and the Tree Train version with the drawbarred units. Here is my paint of them.



As you can see, and as one poster pointed out, the temptaion to load up to the drawbar connection or over it could prove disasterous. As a result, specifications for the cars were beefed up to include very noticable demarcation llines.

[DRGW 5398]

Very cool paint scheme, really eye-catching!

[marknycfan]

Nice work, very imaginative on your part

[canadaandsouthern]

cool car