HO scale freelanced pulpwod car

[Lawton Maner]

Based on personal experience, even after careful drying, the loads will shrink once glued together.

In the past, when stick pulpwood was transported by rail the occasional load had to be set out by the crew because some of the wood had shifted.  Railroads hired crews to reset the loads so they could be safely delivered. One crew, hired by one railroad in North Carolina got much of its work because it was the cheapest and fastest at fixing the problems; until the railroad discovered that they were sawing the offending logs off rather then re-stacking the load.

[Bill Gill]

Good story! Reminds me of a scene in a movie version of a musical about Ziegfeld. He was doing a dozen things at once, including timing a painter who was very carefully brush painting a single folding chair for the theater's seating. Ziegfeld noted the time to the second and calculated how much he'd pay per chair to get all the rest of them done based on that interval. The painter apparently reluctantly agreed to the low offer but the minute Ziegfeld left the room, the painter called in his assistant and said "SPRAY em!" which had been his intention from the start.

About the shrinking scale size loads I'd heard of that happening to another modeler's pulpwood load. So far (a couple years) the permanent loads in the two PRR gondolas above haven't seemed to shrink measurably, but it is something to consider before building removable loads for my cars, thank you. I did have a problem with a removable coal load I made for a friend's Civil War gondola. I cut and shaped a piece of extruded foam - painted black -  to fit the car, carefully wrapped the bottom and sides of the foam in plastic wrap and press fit it tightly into the gondola. I glued coal to the foam and let it sit a day or two. It looked good, but when I removed the plastic wrap, the load became a loose fit in the car. Not visible from a level trackside view, but noticeable up close looking down on the car.