GGGRS 25th anniversary

Genesee G Gauge

25th anniversary car ideas..for 2016.

November 2015:

I have been working with HLW (Hartland Locomotive Works) for the past 6 months or so, to develop ideas for the clubs 25th anniversary car. (the club's 25th anniversary year is next year, 2016.)

HLW has a small 4-wheel tank car:

and a small 4-wheel bobber caboose:

They offer custom runs, where they will do the lettering in-house! They have a minimum requirement of 25 cars for a custom run.

I got quotes for a tank car, and a caboose, from HLW and brought the info to the October 2015 meeting. The general consensus among club members was: "cool idea..but the cars are just really too small.."..And they are tiny. They don't really "fit" with regular G-gauge rolling stock. The club agreed that the single HLW bobber caboose or tank car are really just too small to be useful..we are dropping that idea from consideration for now.

So! new idea! we did some talking and brainstorming at the October meeting, about different ideas, Tony Mesolella and Jim Henrichs came up with a very interesting new idea:

What if we took two of the HLW tank cars, with the GGGRS lettering on them applied by HLW, and used them as flat car loads? The result would be a very interesting, unique, and full-size freight car..

I did some photoshop mockups..the size of the tank cars to the flatcar might not be exact, but I got measurements of both the tanks and the flats, so its close.

The concept:

photoshopped rendering.

At the November club meeting, it was resolved that we will order *just* the tank car bodies, from HLW, then club members can provide their own flat car (several members said they already have a car they can use.) or order a flatcar themselves, if they don't already have one.

Piko has a flatcar, available for $44 from several on-line vendors:

The HLW tanks are 6" long, and 2.5" diameter.

USA trains also makes a flatcar:

The USA flatcar, with the military load, is $53.

Doug said Trainworld has just the USA Trains flatcar, for $35.

You could also do a single HLW tank, on a shorter flatcar.

So there are several flatcar options out there.

It was also suggested that the club might built wood flatcars, as a club project.

You also have the option to buy a tank alone, in addition to the two tanks for the flatcar, which could then be used for something like this, a line-side "fuel-oil tank" or "diesel-fuel tank" on wooden supports:

photo from www.bridge-masters.com

So, question for the club membership:

Would you be interested in purchasing some of these HLW tank cars? to create your own GGGGRS 25th anniversary car?

We would be ordering only the tanks from Hartland, not ordering flatcars. The tanks would come with the tank body, dome, and brackets, complete with our logo and lettering, but not the frame or trucks..like this:

The tank support brackets will have the "mounting tabs" on the bottom of them, not shown in the rendering above. The tabs can be used to attach the tanks to the flatcar, or they can be removed if other mounting methods are desired.

Club members can be responsible for providing their own flatcar, or we can explore the scratch-building wood flatcar option. either way, we could have several club "build sessions" to assemble the final cars, as a group club project.

The HLW tanks, with the dome and brackets, and our lettering applied by HLW, are $13.75 per tank. I dont have an exact shipping estimate yet, it will depend on the total number of tanks ordered..but lets round it up to an even $15 per tank. (the final amount might be slightly less or slightly more than $15, but it will be close to that amount. probably not more than one dollar in either direction.)

So two tanks, for one flatcar, would be $30 total.

Several club members are planning to order three tanks, or more, and use the extra tanks for other projects, such as the "diesel fuel tank" idea. or to simply make two or more club flatcars! (three tanks would be $45, etc..)

Please email me at sscotsman@yahoo.com, and let me know how many individual tanks you would like to order.

I would like a final count by December 9th, the next club meeting.

payment will be arranged later, right now I only need a count.

thanks,

Scot