Forney Slat-Sided Gondola

One of the more unusual cars in the Forney freight line up is his gondola with slat sides. Since I first saw one, I have found it intriguing. What was Red Forney thinking? What prototype was he following, and why was he interested in it? The only Standard Gauge predecessor was the Ives (and Marklin) Coke Car of the 1920s. These were made by laboriously soldering narrow strips (the slats) onto upright stakes to create the skip-board sides of the car.

Forney had a primitive die that he had made, to stamp the ribs in the side pieces of his gondola and hopper cars. He had another die that he used to stamp out the slots for the couplers in the ends of his car frames. He was able to make the sides for his slat-side gondola or coke car by combining these two dies. The ribs on his gondolas and hoppers are spaced about 1-1/4" apart. But the coupler-slot die was 2" wide, so for the slat sides he increased the spacing between the ribs. A 15" car side had 6 ribs and 7 bays, with 3 slots in each bay. This meant stamping 21 slots, one at a time, perfectly aligned both vertically and horizontally; and then stamping 6 ribs, one at a time, between the slots. It is no wonder that Forney did not make many of these cars, and that they are scarce today. In the bins of parts that came with my purchase of Forney Trains, there are several nearly finished sides, with most of the slots stamped out, and then one slot stamped out of alignment, either by operator error or a mis-firing press, ruining the piece.

Forney used the same "dreadnaught" ends and corner angles that went on his gondolas, and trimmed the top edge of the car all around with hand-bent J-bead, mitered at the corners. All of this was spot-welded together in his usual fashion along with his trademark brake wheel assembly and ladders.

To increase my rate of success, I have had my local water-jet shop cut out the openings in the flat 24-gauge steel side pieces, my only departure from the original method of construction. I then use Red Forney's original die from the 1970s to stamp the individual ribs. I make the J-bead, car ends, and other details the way he did, and spot-weld them all together on a 15" bent sheet metal base. The construction process is still piecemeal and tedious, and not without its risks, but significantly improved from what Red set himself up for.

Although Forney's friend Glenn Gerhard used Forney's stamped steel hopper and gondola bodies to make his version of the cars, there is no indication that Glenn did so with any Forney slat-side gondolas. Forney never made enough of them in any case. Nevertheless, I am making the Forney slat-side gondola in two versions. One is true to the original, using Forney trucks and hook couplers, for operators to run in their Forney freight consists. The other version is the same car, but mounted on Glenn trucks and equipped with Lionel latch couplers, to be compatible with my other Glenn-type, aluminum freight cars.

As far as prototype cars of this type, there are a couple possibilities. Coke was a clean-burning, nearly smokeless fuel made by pre-burning coal to remove organic matter, in a matter similar to making charcoal from wood. The open slat-side railway cars carried the chunky commodity in bulk and were presumably unloaded by hand shovel. The Ives Standard Gauge 194 Coke Car was marked for the Pennsylvania, but other Eastern coal routes likely utilized such cars as well?

Further research into slat-side gondolas reveals Southern Pacific's "beet racks" for hauling sugar beets in bulk from field to processing plant. These look very similar to Forney's rendition. Because these would have been needed only seasonally, the "beet rack" slat-side superstructure was made to be removable so that the resulting flatcar could be used for other freight in the off-season.