Model Railroading on the Cheap

    My coal tipple is just a Walthers paper flat along the room wall, disguised with hand painted sky board background and a ‘paper’ wood board fence. These were pasted on to a board to help hold them straight. This industry is for loading hopper cars; I have other industrial spaces for emptying them. It’s a small coal operation but it works quite well as a mainline industry serviced by the bidirectional peddler freight. My small layout has no room for big industries.

    The sign for Love Coal was done with the computer paint program, printed with my first color printer and cut out with scissors and glued to the building. I wanted to change the name of the tipple (Norfolk Coal) with a new home-made on the computer sign; I hope the dark and light shades of the yellow and blue blend with the ‘printed’ roof shadow on the building.

    As for hopper car loads I made my own by using a false bottom of foam core to fit inside the car then lined the car with cellophane (to keep the glue from sticking to the sides of the car) then glued a heavy headless nail or spike (probably 20d) to the foam core false bottom and filled the top of the car with loose artificial coal, soaked it with white glue thinned with alcohol. After that dried overnight I removed the plastic liner and made sure the load now hard, was easy to remove with a strong magnet (I use one from an old radio speaker) as a tool to remove the load without touching the car.