Woodchip Gondolas - Part 1

This update has become the companion piece to my recent Almost Completed ...Saw Mill entry.  While I had plenty of centerbeam hoppers to support the Muskoka Timber saw mill operation, one item I was lacking was an adequate number of woodchip cars.  So over the Christmas break, I decided to dig into some unbuilt woodchip car kits which have been sitting on my build shelf for several years. I should stop here and point out that while the manufacturer called them wood chip cars, in Canadian railroad terms they are correctly identified as gondolas. The resin kits, manufactured by Alpine Railway Shops of Kettleby, Ontario, were marketed as being representative of rolling stock used by CN and BCR for saw mills and paper mills. The gons were to become lettered for the KLR and be used in shuttle service between the Muskoka Timber mill and the Spruce Falls Pulp & Paper mill complex.

Researching sites such as the Canadian Freight Car Gallery, it appears that National Steel Car built this particular gondola for the Algoma Central, Canadian National (CN 879250-879749, Built 1975) and Pacific Great Eastern (PGE 90001-90140, built 1970). The Algoma Central received two groups of these cars. The first group, comprising 90 cars numbered ACIS 1401-1490 was built and delivered in 1974. The second group, delivered in 1981, were the 23 cars of series AC 1501-1523. About half of the 1500-series cars were sold off to Newaygo Forest Products in the early 1990s when the mill at Mead closed in 1985; some of the others were sold to Westar Timber (WESX) in British Columbia. Both series of ACR cars were built with one solid end, and one end that is a door, hinged at the top, for unloading the car using a hydraulic ramp. The car is tilted on end and emptied much like a dump truck. These cars were acquired for service for Newaygo Forest Products, shipping chips from the mill at Mead on the Northern subdivision to pulp mills in the USA.

Source: http://canadianfreightcargallery.caPhotographer: William Henderson , Location: Glen Valley, BC. 
Date: May 21, 2014

Source: http://canadianfreightcargallery.caPhotographer: George Widener 

Cars similar or identical to the 1500 series were also built in the 1980s for Quebec-Ontario Paper (QOPX) and Euro-Can Pulp & Paper (EURX).  The cars were 163 gross tons, with a 6,600 cubic foot-capacity, painted light green and numbered QOPX 100-204, with the reporting marks signifiying the Quebec & Ontario Paper Co. The cars were Leased from General Electric (GERSCO) by the Donohue Paper Company and used to service the newsprint mill in Thorold, ON, which received woodchips from northern Quebec and Ontario.

Woodchip cars were built as large pieces of rolling stock, due to the density and relative weight of the material that they were carrying.  As you can imagine, woodchips are very light and don't really compact bery well, meaning that cars can be overfilled without reaching the cars rated capacity.  Often loaded cars were tarped to help keep the contents from flying out of the rail car and to the surrounding landscape.  

Pine Trees

In keeping with the holiday spirit, I decided to sit down and create some trees for the layout, specifically some pine trees.  Several years ago, I acquired three boxes of Campbell Scale Model trees that a gentleman approached me about trading for several Athearn blue box kits that I had listed for sale.  I knew nothing about these trees except that they came five to a box, with all of the materials supplied in the box.  I couldn't recall seeing these at any shows, but decided to go ahead with the trade anyway based on the reputation Campbell has for kits.  So the kits arrived and I promptly placed them on nthe modeling shelf of projects to build down the road.

I needed some evergreen trees for a corner of the layout and decided to start building my first pine tree.  The first thing I noticed was that the pine tree "sticks" were much larger than I had anticipated and larger than any other pine tree that I have on the layout.  I think that the trees are more in keeping with some western pines this week, however, as I'm going to place them in a corner and they won't be a focal part of the scene, I'm hoping that they don't stand out too much.

The foliage consists of two bags of what I believe to be air ferns.  Air fern has a delicate, airy structure as the name implies and is available through florists or garden centers. The truck of the tree consists of a pre-stained wooden dowel, with pre-drilled tiny holes in the trunk of the tree.  So it's a simple matter to insert the air fern branches cut to shape into the hole after a small amount of white glue is placed on the trunk.  Branches can be re-trimmed with an X-Acto knife or scissors as you build your tree, and most branches need some amount of trimming as the air fern seems to twist quite a bit.  

I'm very pleased with the results to date. Each tree takes about an hour to construct and trim. My only complaint is that whatever the air fern has been treated with, or maybe it's naturally like this, the smell tends to become annoying after about 30 minutes of working with them. It's some sort of moldy type of smell that I find to be distasteful. Fortunately the result is worth the temporary annoyance

Next step is to "plant" my trees.

Initial tree materials. Sorry for all of the background clutter but it's my active work bench.

Completed treet

Close up of the branch structure