Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Bulkhead Flatcar Wrapped Lumber Loads

Finding suitable wrapped lumber loads for your flatcars used to be a little bit tricky... until Chris van der Heide provided us with relevant information and several genuine Canadian lumber wraps a few years ago.


This project was high on my list, but I got sidetracked more than once before I decided to actually tackle it once for all. However, I was mistaken thinking such a project was something you can in one evening. Wrapped lumber loads are a true labor of love that requires several hours to complete. Cutting the wood, wrapping each bundle and finally assembling and adding steel bands is quite taxing in term of time. And while I generally don't care about Olympic Games, it made for a good background noise while building the loads.


However, I must confess the first batch of wood blocks were sawn on Louis-Marie table saw which is now nearing the end of its revenue life. The unreliable tool yielded less than consistent results, which I learned too soon would have a serious impact on the final result. My word of advice is quite simple, make sure your wood blocks are exactly the same height and width with perfectly square angles. Anything short of that should be scrapped.

Anyway, I still assembled my first load with the crooked bundles. The result was better than I thought, but I'm actually in the process of building a second and third load, each one being better than the first one. As always, practice makes perfect and takes times. Yep, just like Olympic athletes who must repeat again and again the same set of motions to ensure they master their sports.

Once again, a big thanks for Chris to have provided useful information to Canadian modellers.

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