We are getting ready to convert a gondola to an open car. I am looking for pictures, ideas and advise. Both on how to and how not to do it.
Areas of primary interest are egress and seating.
Any help is welcome.
Jack

Pressure treated lumber, sanded very smooth anywhere a passenger will contact the wood, and several coats of paint.

Cast iron park bench kits, get the ones that use 2 x 4 slats.

-Hudson

Be careful with using an old freight car for passenger use with the FRA if you are under their jurisdiction. THe old car rule has come up for a couple of operations where they have converted freight cars to passenger service. I'd suggest talking to the MP&E inspector before you get too far involved.

Robby

I have seen a passenger car where they yanked the top off and made an open car out of the thing. Being in Pac NW where it rains often, they filled the bottom with a (I assume) thin layer of cement to handle any potential for standing water damages later on. I thought that was a pretty smart idea if it's done correctly.

The Arcade & Attica took i think a 40 footer, and put a box-car roof on it.

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2497/4010 ... 4240_z.jpg

Dave

I look at a lot of railroad museums, and I ain't bragging. Far and away the best open car that I have ever seen is the 65' pipe gon at the Southern Michigan Railroad.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/daverodriguez/4041145208/
The car feels organic, unique and fun, while retaining a sense of the historic purpose of the car. It's easy to keep up and the sight lines are best in the business.

It was done in the infancy of the organization, and like anything it was hit and miss, but here are the hits IMO.

Prep: Sandblasted down to white metal, quality alkyd primer and paint. Lasted about 20 years. Would last a lot longer with epoxy primer/Amerlock etc. under LPU paint.

Decking: 2x6 stringers leveled on the gondola bottom then 2x6 decking. The comment of the day was "built for elephants" but it has held up.

Seating: A-frame bench seating down the middle, looking sideways, 3 blocks of 16 feet each, with gaps between. (our rule of thumb is 60 seats at max capacity.) The only downside to this is it's difficult to move through the train taking tickets because you have two aisles to work. I would recommend offsetting the bench seats 2-3" off center so one aisle is wider; that would become the conductor path.

Wood: old-school wolmanized. The car just cleared its 26th year of service with original wood. Most wood is still serviceable but the passenger seat bottoms are about done for. (the floor is in same condition but that's OK for a floor.)

TREX: We debated retrofitting the car with plastic lumber (Trex), but the deal-breaker was the stringers are too far apart. (Trex is saggy and requires more support.) I like the organic feel of real wood, but nobody looks at seat bottoms and that's where it matters most.

Post-rain use: After a rainstorm the car seats are very wet and the wet wood soaks into people's butts. Not happy about that part. Have lots of towels/blankets on board. This is one place painting or Trex would help.

Egress: Don't even bother. Have people walk thorugh from an adjacent coach. First few years we used a caboose for that.

End access: tough problem, look elsewhere for a good solution. I like what CSRM did.

Lettering: I don't like the "not historically accurate" aspect of this, but billboard lettering on the side of the gon makes groups LOVE to get pictures in front of it.

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HudsonL. Sand and paint: Disagree. We never did and never had a problem. If you're that worried about it, go Trex and bedone with it.

Bare wood is fairly maintenance-free. Once you paint it, the paint will deteriorate and you'll have to repaint it often, because of butt wear. Repainting is a significant chore because of all the darn prep.

Paint on fresh lumber will fail. (well, housepaint will stick, but it is very fragile and won't hold up to butts.) So you'll either need to stack your wood for a couple years to weather/dry/stabilize, or go bare for that long.

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Robby, lots of outfits both on and off general system have open-air cars fashioned from freight cars. Tourist railroads are always exempt from 238 and 239. Freight cars converted into passenger service also drop off a number of freight regs, since they are not in "revenue freight or work train" service. They're in kind of a regulatory limbo.

Well, not that much. Even if exempt, FRA still holds everyone to a reasonableness standard, under the scope of their E.O. authority. They want to see your practices are reasonable for you.

If you have a low sided gon, make sure to add a safety rail around the top, so nobody goes backwards overboard.

Personally, I don't care for center bench seating, which is awkward for both passengers and crew. Strasburg came up with a basic wood walkover seat that seems ideal for the purpose and doesn't restrict passengers to one side view.

Alan Maples

Not gondolas specifically, but one of the biggest users of open cars in excursion service is the Verde Canyon RR, where seemingly every other car on their trains is a converted flat car with canopy roof. Of course, half the point of that railroad is observing the Verde Canyon and watching for eagles.....

Years ago, TVRM had a couple of ex-Southern Railway gondolas. They had metal roofs and were laid out in a walk through design with boarding via adjacent cars. As I recall, they had park bench seating (facing fore/aft) and were painted in Southern Railway freight colors.

I noticed that pretty much everyone has been mentioning seating arrangements...not to be a smart ass, but maybe it's better to not have any. If you visit the cumbres and Toltec railroad, you will see their car has no seats at all, and the passengers flock to that car as it is the best one for the open air experience, photography and mobility....just sayin'

Robby has a good point about talking to the local FRA MP&E guy first. I like the idea of using the cast park bench kits, but would use some of the plastic lumber instead, less maintenance, it will never rot out. One of our local 'shopping Meccas' has them all over the place, and they would look right at home in a gon. Any bench will be too low for seated passengers to see over the side, so the benches will have to be on an island in the middle of the floor, maybe 6 inches high or so.

If you wind up using a passenger car (i.e. the FRA says no to a gon), make sure you do a good job of sealing up the sides so water doesn't get in and rust out your side sheets, or more. I know of a line that took a Reading coach and opened up the ends and left the middle third closed, like one of the CN or CP Rocky Mountain cars. Unfortunately water got in, and an inspector (ICC, PUC, FRA, a looooong time ago-) condemned the car, actually a pair of them

Also, don't take a Stillwell and slice off the roof. Another outfit did that, and wound up having to weld in some I beams atop the sides. Next, they built up a roof, framed with old boiler tubes, of galvanized steel and fiberglass (to let some light in). There was an electrolysis issue, and that car still went down the RR like a Flexible Flyer sled, shedding roofing parts. It also had problems with water in the sides.

I like the flatcar that the Durbin and Greenbriar Valley uses behind the Climax. It is far more substantial than many of the '2 by 4 and chicken wire' open cars that I have seen over the past 40 years or so. The WK&S car above looks good, too; ridden it a few times. More than a few railroads have used those L&NE gons the same way.

The reason I mentioned sanding and paint was I have seen these type cars become one big splinter pit.

I like the idea of Trex for seating.

Traffic flow through the car is important.

I am old enough and aching enough that I need a seat.

-Hudson

There is of course the ultimate high capacity, low maintenance passenger car.

A tri-level autorack with park benches! ;-)

-Hudson

I have a couple of detailed photos of the WM's converted passenger gondolas I would love to post, but my photos are about 1000 miles away from me until next week.... Maybe someone else has some.

The Wanamaker and Southern gondola is what the southern michigan railroad's gondola looks like most nice days. Like I say people absolutely love it, and it is far nicer than the cars with canopies (noting that a steam engine is not involved.) It does create a dilemma with advance sale of tickets, because any seat you pre-sell, you need a "plan B" in case it rains.

Forward facing seats probably would add 30% to the seating capacity of the car. But they are either facing backward half the time, or phenomenally hard to build (walkover seats), only a few museums can make those. And even worse, you can't use burly wolmanized 2x6's for the seatbacks, you have to use more delicate fare, and that means you'll need a carbarn to keep the car in.

So I like sideways bench seating because it's easier to build and maintain, fun and unique. You see all those standees in the above pictures, they're having a whale of a time, and you don't see any at all in the cars with normal coach-style seating. I suppose it depends on your opinion of the safety of standees.