December Announcements From InterMountain

[Puddington]

So CP Rail bought their first bathtub gons in 69 and by May of 1970 were running 88 car unit trains from the coal regions of the British Columbia interior to the newly built Robert Bank Super Port for Trans Pacific shipments of coking coal to Japan.....

How does one use these cars on a medium sized layout...? I can't run an 88 car consist; I can't afford an 88 car consist......I'd have to have them staged; blow through as they'd be a scheduled mainline run, not a manifest or local....How many would "look prototypical..." 15...20...30...?

Hmmmmmmmmm.........

(one fun thing would be that they'd almost certainly have been the red cars which turned black in a matter of months due to coal dust so weathering would be a blast........)

[lock4244]

The best bet is a cripple being returned to a shop or post shop, back to the mine or port. They are used for scrap tie loading nowadays, but in 1973, they'd have been way too new. Then there is the mis-routed car, though kinda hard to do on a unit train, but humans will be humans...

Unit train size depends on the size of your layout. Given your plan, 20 cars should suffice.