Let’s see your Custom or rare flatbed loads!

This is my flatbed with camper trailers.  I like the campers, just can't seem to find anymore of them.

And the millitary loads

And an old Menards that shoots and has sound effects. May need to put it on 16 wheel flatbed..

I picked up one of those campers at the April meet at York many years ago.  I went as a guest of a friend, joined TCA after that trip so I could go to the meets.  Haven't been back to York since.

A bit premature since this is in the building stage, but I have two "Atlantis" 1:48 kits I hope to complete in the next few weeks. There are good videos with excellent ideas on painting.

Howitzer video: Howitzer Gun 8" Plastic Model kit 1/48 (atlantis-models.com)

Painting ideas, this is easy for an army version too:  https://atlantis-models.com/wh...stic-model-kit-1-48/

@ToledoEd, is this an Atlantis kit?

I just finished my 1:48 scale Atlantis Piasecki H-25 army helicopter and mounted it on a repurposed Menards military flatcar with a deck that I weathered. The helicopter kit doesn't supply side windows, so I added them. The landing gear was just a bit too wide, so I trimmed the stub axles. As mentioned in my YouTube, the orange tethers on the blades are something I saw online for this helicopter, although mine are too wide. (I may look for some cord at the craft store that's a better size.)

John

Lionel Flat car with custom homemade Lionel style rocket with custom homemade removable Mercury capsule.

Image of the custom Homemade Rocket without Mercury Capsule and custom Homemade Lionel 6413 Mercury Capsule style transporting car and Homemade Mercury Capsules.

Charlie

UPDATE: My American Freedom Train (AFT) flatcars with wagons are getting closer to being finished.  The wagons are samples from Alan (@ALANRAIL) and I should soon get all 10 finished ones.  The vehicles are not correct either, but the best I could find at the time.  Should have the flatcars and loads completed by the 4th of July to add to the rest of the train.

@John's Trains posted:

I just finished my 1:48 scale Atlantis Piasecki H-25 army helicopter and mounted it on a repurposed Menards military flatcar with a deck that I weathered. The helicopter kit doesn't supply side windows, so I added them. The landing gear was just a bit too wide, so I trimmed the stub axles. As mentioned in my YouTube, the orange tethers on the blades are something I saw online for this helicopter, although mine are too wide. (I may look for some cord at the craft store that's a better size.)

John

Nice work John! I have had one of those helos in the closet waiting to get done in Navy. There is a Huey or two around here too.

I'm not much of a scratch builder, but one load I would really like to see is a giant wind turbine blade.  I used to drive I-30 between Little Rock and Texarkana several times a year back in the early 2000s, and would often see a convey of them, usually 3, on trucks.  These guys were huge, maybe 100 feet long?  They must have been heading to the wind farms in West Texas.  I also saw the same size blades several times on the UP line on the Hardy Toll Road in Houston, heading north.  I don't recall how they were being carried, and I was driving by myself at around 70 mph usually, so I couldn't snap a picture on that busy road.

@Big Jim posted:

Nice work John! I have had one of those helos in the closet waiting to get done in Navy. There is a Huey or two around here too.

Thank you, big Jim. You may have already seen it, but hpiguys on youtube has a video of this Atlantis model done in yellow.

John

Update on a few trial loads and an eye opener on the size of more modern loads compared to older loads. I finished the 1 :48 Sinclair gas truck and thought I might see what it looked like with a 1:50 Corgi Greyhound Scenicruiser I was thinking of adding to a flat car. No tie downs or chocks at this point, simply a trial balloon to see what they look like individually and together.  These are both 50' flat cars. The Sinclair is on a Weaver and the Greyhound is on a Lionel.

Each looks good individually but when you put them together, the scenicruiser is big, it makes the Sinclair truck look like a runt!  I have blown some time trying to find the real dimensions and capacity of the original White / Freuhauf prototype gas truck but no luck.  Atlantis says it is 1:48 so who can argue? Gas trucks must have been small in the late 40s and 50s when I think these were around.  The moral of the story is that newer scale loads are bigger than I imagined in comparison with older items.   The last picture is a 1:48 fire truck from 1949 and a Menards box truck which is also supposed to be 1:48. I did not expect this level of difference.

Here is the modern versus not so modern comparison- they obviously had small fires back in 1949.

@hokie71 posted:

Atlantis says it is 1:48 so who can argue? Gas trucks must have been small in the late 40s and 50s when I think these were around. 

I worked on a 1950's single axle gas tanker.  We had to put a clutch in it.  6 cyl gas engine.  I remember thinking it was small for the job.    It was still being run by a construction company in the laye 1970's. In the 1940s-50s most gas stations only had 2-3 pumps.   

@rrgeorge posted:

A load you do not want to treat too roughly !!

Quality Value Variety  Service.  I believe this load covers the Variety portion quite well !( A little concerned over the service portion to be honest)

Here is a video of some of military flats.

Greg P

@rrgeorge posted:

A load you do not want to treat too roughly !!

Need to add a "Do not Hump" placard

Jeez I wish we had the functionality to search for our posts within a thread.  Anyways here one I made for my son from a search light flat...

Here are two I made a few years ago, both were based on photos of real loads.  The rail is from ROW, steel loads are Plastruct, and the strapping is chart tape.  The flat car is MTH, the bulkhead car is Atlas.

In the early 2000s at LIRR, we scrapped the first 10 Budd M1 MU cars that were due for heavy overhaul. As the M7 Bomb cars were coming onto the property, we used 90 foot flatcars to initially send the first 10 cars offline to be scrapped. They were detrucked onsite and secured on the cars by Hulcher Services. The rest were attached to the flats that Bombardier provided to deliver the m7s and sent to Mexico for scrapping.

I was there for the initial 10 and I created a scrap train using MTH TTX 90s and an MTH Gon for the trucks to model what happened.

Since nobody modeled the M1 cars, the Budd Amfleet cars are a close choice. I put cribbing under the  carbodys and settled for the Slamtrack configuration of the doors and decoration. Maybe I will strip the paint, but it looks close enough. The Aluminum cars are Williams, from a six-car set.

I recently ordered a number of items from Menards that came on flat cars, but I removed the pieces from the flat cars to separately place on my layout, which left me with three (3) empty flat cars which needed custom loads (note that two of them came with blue painted truck side frames).

When I placed the order with Menards, I also ordered their 1:48 Military Truck (which was on sale for only $4.44) and I mounted that on one of the empty flat cars with no modifications. The black hold-downs are from a set of inexpensive black, elastic pony-tail holders from a box store pharmacy.

Lionel Santa Fe 6-9823 Std. O flat car with load. Certainly not rare, nor does it have an custom load. But, I believe it qualifies as unusual because, AFAIK, it is the only Lionel Std. O flat car produced with this faux wood crate load. If I’m wrong, I’m sure someone will correct me.

96 degrees at 4:00 pm, so I'm back inside and down in the basement where it's cool. Here's a couple of mine.

My most recent project was an "Indiana Jones" tribute military load, to fill the space behind one of my new Menards deuce and a half transport vehicles:

Earlier, I negotiated a multi-car "Hot Wheels" loan from one of my grandsons to fill the empty slots on a car carrier I had picked up with a mixed lot of used cars:

And even earlier, I created a dump-able log load out of some handy hardwood dowels, to fill a venerable Marx log dumping car that came without its original load. I also ended up scratch building a log receiving rack (not pictured), since the small plastic rack that came with it (visible behind the log car) would on average miss as many logs as it caught!

Since it's on The Central, I wonder if it's heading to Indian Point to donate it's nuclear material for fuel for the Con Ed reactor lighting up Parts of New York?

@coach joe posted:

Since it's on The Central, I wonder if it's heading to Indian Point to donate it's nuclear material for fuel for the Con Ed reactor lighting up Parts of New York?

........" lighting up parts of New York ? "    good choice of words Joe.

Here are some of my military loads

Here are some of my military loads

@mikey posted:

Here are some of my military loads

These two loads are especially nice Mikey.    Never saw anything like these.

Who made them ? 🤔

Here’s a old Revell now Atlantis tanker I custom made by shorting it also added side supports wheels from a Tamiya kit and weathering a Lionel PS-4 Flatcar.

Run this  with my Lifesavers train..

Abrams

humvees

and paladins with faasv

Started out as a plain red Lionel flatcar. Drilled out the truck rivets and replaced with screws, washers and nuts to make painting easier and covered the holes with small plastic/rubber door bumpers. Removed the "Lionel" decaling and repainted the flat car black and the bed a deep brown to simulate a wood deck and added the striping with a fine black sharpie. Added a few New Haven decals I had hanging around from a previous job.

The fusilage is from a 1/48 scale P-51 plastic model kit and I lightly detailed the cockpit. Added some wood bracing using 1/4" strips and the hold-down straps are simple, black hairbands from CVS.

Now I just need to do another flat car for the wing assembly !

Here's a stationary boiler delivered by 8 axle flat car.

Lionel never made a 167x series flat car.  But it's easy to make one by removing the body from a 167x series car.

A pair of custom seasonal loads:

KOFC - Hershey's Kiss on flatcar.

WOFC - Whiskey on flatcar.  Jameson's is Irish whiskey so the "ey" is correct.

When is the last time you saw a 1962 Greyhound Scenicruiser bus on a flatcar?