Elvas Tower: Bill Pratt's D&RGW High Side Gondolas - Elvas Tower

OOOPS! Way back in 2008 Bill and I worked on some high side gondolas. Bill uploaded the open ended pipe gondolas and low side gondolas but somehow we missed the high sides themselves.

So to correct that little fauxpas, here are eight D&RGW high side gondolas for your narrow gauge pleasure! These cars are a mix of the more standard version with 10 vertical posts on each side and the less common 9 post version. Some have no herald at all which means they are suitable for any time from the 1924 rebuilding of the original 1903 cars right up to Cumbres & Toltec Scenic RR days. Some have the round “Royal Gorge-Moffat Tunnel” herald making them suitable for 1935 into the 1940’s. Two of them have the flying Rio Grande herald which makes them suitable for c1940-41 to the end of operations.

All of the cars feature an empty version, a version with a coal load and a version with a lumber load. The flying Rio Grande cars also have a bonus load of Yellow Cake – the Uranium bearing mine tailings that were mined along the RGS in the late 1930’s, early 1940’s.

The models were made from official D&RGW plans from the Maxwell Collection, and most historical data is from "A Century + Ten of D&RGW Narrow Gauge Freight Cars, 1871 to 1981" by RE Sloan.

To install, unzip the contents of the zip file to a location of your choice and copy the eight folders to the Trainset folder of your simulator. Then create consists using the cars.

This model's initial testing, physics adjustments, and texture tweaking was done by Howard Saunders. Further testing was done by Herb Kelsey and Tom Werb, and final Beta testing was done by Tim Muir. Load configurations by Herb Kelsey. Lumber loads courtesy of Andre Ming, whose EULA is found here:

"V Scale Creations license the use of “stlna_flat_timbers.s”( now known as Lumber.s) and “stlnatimbers.ace” (now known as Lumber.ace) to be used in Bill Pratt’s D&RGW High Side Gondolas. The end user does not have the right to redistribute the V Scale Creation shape and/or texture."

Thanks Andre, and thanks to “Motor1” for calling our oversight to our attention.

After all this time, enjoy.