Extra Data for Kit 17.1 and 17.2
Louisville & Nashville 40-foot steel, drop bottom gondola

These L&N gondolas were a large part of their coal hauling fleet with more than 9,000 cars built by the Pressed Steel Car Company in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, through the 1920s. The cars were originally in the 50000-59999 series and had steel floors and six drop-doors.

Beginning in 1950, a number of the cars had the drop doors removed and were reassigned to general service. The cars were renumbered at that time and given GB designation. Review Jerry Hamsmith's prototype summary file below for details.

Pressed Steel Car Company photo from the Bill Welch collection

This kit has a one-piece carbody to ease assembly. Kits included Tichy Train Group brake hardware, Tahoe Model Works #101 50-ton Dalman two-level truck sideframes, and Precision Design Company decals. Couplers, wheelsets, and car weight were not included.

Resin Car Works would like to thank the following rail historians and modelers for their high quality work. Without their efforts, these kits would not have been produced.

Tom Madden - casting work
Dave Campbell - decal artwork
Ken Soroos – kit instruction formatting
Frank Hodina - additional masters, kit instructions and model photos
Jerry Hamsmith - prototype data roundup

There were two versions of this kit.

Kit 17.1 included decals for the as-built lettering.
Kit 17.2 included decals for repainted cars with the Old Reliable slogan.

These files are intended to help you build our models.
Kit 17.1 & 17.2 instructions (7 MB file)
L&N steel gon prototype summary from Jerry Hamsmith (8 MB file)

Prototype images
L&N 53399 - Pressed Steel Car Company builder image from the Bill Welch collection

Split-K brake installation

Here are a couple photographs from Eric Hansmann to help with the split-K brake component installation.

Scrap styrene was used as pedestals to mount the air reservoir. The connection between the air reservoir and brake cylinder is 0.015-inch diameter wire.

The long brake lever was made from 1x8 styrene. It rests on scrap styrene at the pivot point. This is mounted closer to the cross member as the lever should be nearly parallel to the cross member.

A short length of chain connects the long brake lever with the brake cylinder clevis. Holes were drilled in the long brake lever and the top of the brake cylinder clevis for small diameter wire pins. The ends of the chain are positioned over the pins and glued. The excess pin length is trimmed after the glue sets up. The photo above was snapped before the glue had set.

It's possible that many of these L&N gondolas retained their original brake systems into the 1940s. The K brakes would only be replaced with an AB system when the cars underwent a major rebuild.