Nature's Wonderland Ore Car

NWRR Loco and Passenger Car

Once you have a Nature's Wonderland locomotive, the next thing you need are ore cars. Fortunately, Hartland Locomotive Works has provided a great starting point with their Hartland Paper Company G Scale Mini Gondola Car;

Hartland Mini Gondola Car

The scale of this car is nearly a perfect match to the LGB Baldwin 0-4-0 we converted. The actual size of the car is 90% of the correct dimension, but the height of the sides makes a great match to the engine.

Side Panels prior to painting

We needed to remove the stakes in the middle of the car sides - a modelers back saw and file worked well for that. Next, we fabricated panels to simulate the NWRR ore car sides out of Evergreen V-Groove 4250 styrene sheet.

The lateral and diagonal planks were cut from the same sheet stock as the side and end panels.  The corner posts on the car body were 0.2" square, so the 0.080 thickness of the built-up inserts was a good match.

The end result is a credible replica of the NWRR ore car and only takes a couple of hours to fabricate.