I needed to add a coal load to a loco this afternoon so I thought I would do a quick rundown on the way I put a coal load in a tender or a wagon also works for other loads The base of the load is a foam insert that is shaped and then coated with the desired load be it Coal, stone, ore etc The empty tender of a Brass C38 class pacific The foam this is the soft black type that you find as packing with electrical items or Bachmann US train boxes, etc Being a shallow area in the tender I used a hobby knife to half the foam from its orignal size don't worry if the peice is too small as a you can join the foam with a smear of Super glue and push the two edges together, in my case the scrap of foam I used was shorter than the tender space but twice as tall, I halved the piece then joined the 2 bits end to end then cut to the size of the tender space A off cut of foam placed in the tender to demonstrate the position the foam takes and the reason for a off cut to be placed under to give some shape in the next step If you had a shaped tender coal area you could carve the shape in the top of the foam insert to form the pile A little of the offcut foam was glued in the middle of the tender shaped peice to give a bit of shape once in position With this load it was to be a coal load so I used real coal, this was collected from the Hunter River it's a nice shiny black coal not a brown dull like some available. To stick the coal to the foam I used rapid set PVA wiped on the top of the foam then it was dipped in the container then left to dry for 1/2 an hour Foam insert coated with coal, glue drying. Once the glue is set you now should have a soft flexable load that can be installed to the model and can be removed at any time without damage to the model esp good for models like this one with the wrap over top coal wings to the tender. Squeeze the foam place in tender top, then it expands under the edge and the tender is now full and the loco now looks like it's ready for the front of the next express service In the workshop a coal load for a brass C38 In the workshop a coal load for a brass C38
An adition to the topic. This is a O scale C38 its tender has full rib and internal detail. So the foam load base is really useful in this tender. Foam was "Shaped" to represent, a loco that has used a good lot of coal and was on the way to its destination (only usually full when the journey begins. Each rib was marked on the foam and a slot cut to fit over each. Foam shaped at the coal doors so you can see through to the footplate. The foam also forms nicely under the curved tender top rails End result looks like this and is removable if required. Attached files
