LCCA on site car from the convention

thats really nice!  Love the flag and its a Northern Pacific car too!  

Hey Cabinet Bob, your favorite son here LOL. I saw that too but not be able to go to the convention and to get it the price was a bit out of my budget................Paul

paul 2 posted:

Hey Cabinet Bob, your favorite son here LOL. I saw that too but not be able to go to the convention and to get it the price was a bit out of my budget................Paul

It was a good buy for 55.00.. I'm  sure we will see more on the secondary  market soon.

Glad to see that great Weaver tooling in use! 

Looks nice.  Do you have any pics of the Special Train Trip boxcar LCCA usually sells following one of the main train rides?

Mike W. posted:

Looks nice.  Do you have any pics of the Special Train Trip boxcar LCCA usually sells following one of the main train rides?

Mike : we did not have train ride cars this year. What we could get was a diecast pickup with the train ride logos on the door.I can post pictures if you want... Bob

Yes, please post a pic.  Thanks!

I had a nice warm day on the porch yesterday. Calm wind and bright sunshine. I decided to set up the camera ( Nikon ) and tri-pod and make a fun little diorama. Time slips away.. the devil is in the details. The cars are from LCCA Tacoma, WA 2017 Convention. I now have three with different road numbers. 

The railroads really used specialized equipment like this but typically they where gondolas for use with rotary dumpers. No time to "piddle" around with opening labor intensive doors at the bottom. Cars are pulled uphill with a cable and DUMPED en'masse. The Lionel product is a "good" likeness though these cars are really oversized and would have had reflective paint markings on the corners. Some railroads took old box cars and added another 5' of steel on top with internal bracing. Look carefully today.. most coal gondolas are mostly aluminum. The long .. long ( really ) long coal trains will soon be a sight from yesteryear .. For rail watchers KING coal has died. 

Here is the real MCCoy wood chip service on Canadian rails. Cars are seldom seen except in the North country .. I have seen old ones in storage in Duluth, MN but much of this activity is near Thunder Bay, ON or in the deep woods of the South. Chips are used for engineered building products and probably are cheaper and more sturdy than marine veneer plywood. These wall boards are most often used in roofing applications .. look around for new construction in your berg. 

Before the early 1960's the big rails used to ship pulpwood for paper mills in six foot logs on bulkhead flats. Lionel and Atlas have both modeled these beautifully in "O-Gauge". Before 1950 logs were shipped in box cars. Logs introduce "bugs / insects and dirt" into the load so the box cars were worn out hulks and marked for wood (only) service. By the end of the 60's the amount of wood fiber being shipped to mills increased noticeably. Railways rebuilt steel coal hoppers and ordinary gons. with extended sides and internal bracing. If you see these they are quite oversized .. the load of chips is fluffy relative to lump coal. Today, many paper mills own private fleets of wood chip hoppers. These are interchanged only on a regional basis obviously tied to forest product locales. Still the vast majority of fiber is still shipped to the integrated mills as logs. Sawdust is used in boilers and is often burned at the local mill. Average load limit of heaped chip loads is 152,000# with 12" heap on top > 6275 Cu. Feet.  See photo. 

Mike W. posted:

Yes, please post a pic.  Thanks!

Mike : here you go..

Guess I should have tried for more then just one day! LOL

Will LCCA have extras of the logo pickups for sale on the website?

Mike, they were nearly sold out. Maybe see some at York at the LCCA booth

Mike W. posted:

Will LCCA have extras of the logo pickups for sale on the website?

 

LCCA recently sent an eblast that said they will NOT be available on the website.

Stu

I have had the joy to run my trains on Cabinet Bob's Leyland, Iowa large layout .. Almost every layout builder like to have appropriate scale sized "die-cast" to support our visuals like one would see running on the real railroad. I travel the county and I try to stop in smaller rural towns to see where the railroad supports local industry. I am not whimsical with my layout.. IF I model it .. I think I have really seen it at trackside. I think "scale" for 0-Gauge is : 1/50 (Corgi) / 1:43 (Ertl) .. and I like to haunt auction sites to find a good deal on gently used product. Remember : 1/64 is really S-Gauge and looks very good on the back of a flat car load. 

At our Minnesota State Fair, there is a large DEERE dealer selling new die-cast ( Hint: very $$) You can search on E-bay for Lionelville or other key-words where you might get lucky. Here's another retail store for DEERE farm die-cast for model rail farm enthusiasts. I scrounge on the auction sites .. You will likely bid "against" me there. 

http://stores.ebay.com/McGavic...rksid=p2047675.l2563   / NEW DEERE die-cast

This is one of many and you really have to dig around on the www. to find exactly what you want. I have even purchased die-cast from as far away as Europe ( France ) so my point is .. Don't give up too easily. 

I have found some pretty nice scale die-cast at my local Goodwill store. ( Hint ..)  & Wal-mart .. 

For my wood-chip diorama I used John Deere (green) die-cast to make the look just right. Too much plastic becomes a negative as does: Batman .. Miss Piggy .. Supermobile.. But that's "me". Model what you like and if your pals don't compliment you ..   Kind wishes .