A Tale of Bulkhead Flats and Centerbeams…

First up is a set of loads for the bulkhead flats and a centerbeam that I have on hand.

First I should mention that these are something that I’ve had on hand for a very long time. I believe that they are from Jaeger HO Products (jaegerhoproducts.com). I went onto their site, but did not see the loads listed. Probably because the cars that they fit were the old Roundhouse bulkhead flats. Which is what I was fitting them to. The centerbeam is from Front Range. Also, no longer available.

The loads are wood blocks that a wrap is glued to. The wraps are almost like photos printed on paper. I don’t have any shots of them not wrapped as I had done that long ago. I just never had fitted them to the flats. Included are some balsa pieces for dunnage and blocking.

There is four different styles. The first is a block that is approximately 7/8″ H x 1 1/8″ W x 7 11/16″ L. The other three are only 9/16″ wide and work on the centerbeam style car or doubled up with blocking in between on the bulkhead flats. They vary in height from 1 1/4″ to 1 1/2″. The fourth style has several different heights.

I added the balsa strips on the bottoms and in between where applicable. They were then glued in place on the cars with canopy glue. As I have mentioned before I like canopy glue because it holds well and can be disassembled later if I want. I then used rigging thread for the tie downs.

After I finished the loads I looked at the cars and wished i had weathered them before loading. Undaunted I went ahead and weathered around the loads.

Here are the finished cars.

First set weathered and loads secured.
Second set weathered and loaded..
Weathered and loaded centerbeam.

I did have one more bulkhead flat than loads.

Weathered bulkhead flat.

Below a view not weathered and weathered.

Without weathering.
Weathered and loaded, need more tie downs.

Will have an update with another project real soon. Til then, take care and stay safe.

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