Thursday, December 31, 2015

Rolling Stock Drawers - Identification

Two weeks ago, Jérôme decided it was tiem to identify each drawer of our rolling stock cabinet. Finding a type font wasn't as easy as one-two-three and he decided to look at this problem differently.


At least, it was decided each drawer would be attributed to a specific customer: Ciment St-Laurent, Dominion Textile and Donohue.



Jérôme's idea is quite simple and works quite well while looking as good. He merged a silhouette of a rail car with the customer's logo in color. These identification cards were printed on heavy paper and inserted on the metal holders when recently installed.



In the case of Ciment St-Laurent, the plant require the use of two drawers. One is for covered cement hoppers while the other one is for open hoppers of coal and gypsum. One identification card show an open hopper, the other one a covered hopper.


As you can see, we need to find a logo for the last two unassigned drawers. They mainly store cars bound to the team track in Clermont.

3 comments:

  1. I'm interested in the drawers you're using.
    Have you written about them before? How deep are the drawers? How many pieces of rolling stock do they hold? Can you share a photo of the inside of a drawer? (<Maybe this should all go in a new post.)
    I have built my own drawers, but I'm rapidly running out of room for rolling stock and I'm looking for alternatives to building more...
    Thanks in advance!
    - Trevor

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    Replies
    1. I heard you... I've posted a few times about the drawers.

      The original idea came from a gentleman in Sherbrooke, but Louis improved the design by adding the sloped wood blocks making car identification much more easier. It's also an insurance cars can't move one against another. The locomotive and cabooses drawer is plain to make sure details like sunshades won't be smashed under their own weight.

      I talked about it in these threads, but the first drawers were built back in 2010.

      http://hedley-junction.blogspot.ca/2015/02/cabinet-making-part-2.html

      http://hedley-junction.blogspot.ca/2015/02/cabinet-making-part-3-final.html

      Dimensions are roughly 48" long x 18" deep (16" in fact) x 4" high.

      We used good quality kitchen drawer tracks and not cheap knock off to make sure they would work fine. I wouldn't recommend going over 48" long because it can induce a lot of stress if not opened correctly (we once built a 5 feet long drawer and it wasn't handy at all).

      Instead of sloped 2"x3", one could used styrofoam block under the foam carpet underlay.

      Each drawer has 5 rows, each holding 5 x 50ft cars or 6 x 40ft cars. Total: 25 to 30 cars.

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    2. The cabinet have 1 locomotives drawer (about 15 locomotives and 5 cabooses) and 6 car drawers (about 150 to 180 cars), all in a relatively small space under the staging area. The lowest drawer is about 18" from the floor.

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