New Haven Drop Bottom Gondola - F&C Kit

F&C NH drop bottom gondola kit now rolls along on the WRD.

Back in the spring I picked up two F&C kits at the Collinsville, Ct. event. My post of July 11, 2014 covers the purchase. As mention in July my new policy regarding rolling stock kits is I don't buy any new kits till my recent purchased are built. I restrict that to new purchases as I have more old kits than I can ever build. Well with heading to Springfield in a few weeks and I am looking at a couple more F&C kits I best get going on the two I have. Peter and I are doing a resin kit each and my Reading double door car is being built on our work days (not sure if it will be done by Springfield but it will be close). With the NH gondola done I am free to shop.

This car fits in good with my growing fleet of gondolas.

The NH gondola surprising went together extremely easy. In two short afternoons I had the car ready for painting and lettering. I actually spent more time painting, lettering and weathering the car. This is a one piece body kit that needs the grabs, stirrups, cut levers, brake wheel, trucks, couplers and under body details added. There are nice little indents for the drill bit to grab on to...something that makes it really easy to get the grabs on straight. The clean up of the shell is minimal and the resin cuts like butter. The flooring insert needs some cleaning up also. The photo captions tell the rest of the story...now to make my list for Springfield....George

The insert flooring will be painted first before being adding. The details went on well as the one piece body is very easy to clean and drill into.

The gondola is painted black and the flooring began with a coat of reefer white (I was cleaning out the gun from my last spray) followed by a heavy coat of dust. Once dry Hunterline weathering mix is applied with some Bragdon powders to finish it off. The decal sheeting gives you three version of lettering one can pick from. The instruction sheets have photos of all prototype versions.

The weathering is done. Since I picked an older version of lettering I gave the car a really dirty look.

I decided to add a bit of interest to the interior of this gondola. I added a few left over scraps from my Hunterline bridge I built last month. I also threw in some newspapers and 2 by 4's. There is a bit of gravel and dirt in there too.

My car is ready to roll on the WRD, now back to finishing the Reading double door boxcar.