There is an outstanding railroad museum in Snoqualmie, Washington, just East of Seattle toward Snoqualmie Pass off of Interstate 90. In addition to a historic depot downtown and scenic weekend train rides, the museum has both indoor and outdoor exhibits, including a collection of locomotives and rolling stock.
Of great interest to me is a gondola in their collection, one of the only remaining pieces of Pacific Coast Railroad rolling stock. On a visit to the museum, I took a number of photographs of the car to capture the details. Although it sits inside of a fenced siding, I was able to view most of the car from different angles.
According to Great Northern Railroad Historical Society (GNRHS) Reference Sheet #364, the Great Northern transferred a number of older GS gondolas from GN series 76000-76249 to the PCRR around 1956 to replace worn out cars for hauling coal. This drop bottom gondola was originally built for the Great Northern in 1918 by Western Steel Car and Foundry in Illinois, as part of the GN's first purchase of General Service (GS) gondolas. After its use by the PCRR, this one went on to serve Rayonier on their logging railroad on the Olympic Peninsula, hauling gravel, and then was donated to the museum in 1986, after 68 years of use, as described on this sign next to the car.
As you can see, the car sits outside and shows the effects of it's long years of service, but amazingly, one can still make out ghostly remnants of the large "PACIFIC COAST" billboard type lettering that the PCRR used on their gondolas.
The gondola sits on trucks that have "NP" and "NORPACRY" cast on them, so at some point the original trucks apparently were changed out for these Northern Pacific solid bearing trucks, whether by one of the railroads or the museum, I am not sure. These trucks are similar to the original Bettendorf trucks that were supplied on these gondolas, based on equipment diagrams and photos in the reference sheet.
On the "B" end, it has an Ajax handbrake and you can also see the air retainer valve and the bottom dump door release mechanism. The power handbrakes were added during rebuilding in 1939, when the sides and ends were also replaced.
There is no commercially available model that matches this car, one would need to accept some compromises unless you wanted to completely scratch build it. I plan to kitbash a car or two to represent these signature PCRR gondolas so being able to photograph the car and supplement my other research materials was very welcome.
Jeff, I too have always been interested in modeling one of these drop bottom gons ever since I bought the old Champ Decals #2 diagram book. I saw your link to your blog in my Yahoo email, under a different subject.
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts for a possible 'bash is using one of the Bonsall Rio Grande gondolas (43000 series) and plate ends from Detail Associates as starting points.
Rich Christie