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Atlas O also bought the tooling for the Intermountain USRA 40 ft gondola and produce it in their master line.    It is a steel frame outside braced car with wood sides.

Weaver did a War-Emergency 52 gon.   This is a WWII car with steel structure and wood replica sides.   Many roads replaced the wood sides when they could get steel plates after the war.  

As mentioned the Atlas Trainman line gondola is a 52 ft steel gon.

The Weaver gondolas were made in China, then Atlas O acquired them to produce more road names and road numbers.

There were a variety of O gauge gondolas and O scale gondolas produced by "K-Line" or MDK.

Williams by Bachmann has O gauge gondolas.

The original O scale Atlas O gondolas are available second hand. These gondolas were produced somewhere in Europe then imported and painted by companies like Weaver Models. 

The new Atlas O scale Trainman gondolas are new cars made in China.



Andrew

Great posting Ron.  I’ll add a few.  I think the Older Atlas gons are great in every way except weight, but that’s easily fixed.  The newer Atlas Trainman gons are even better—same tooling, more weight.  
I’m a prototype waybill operator, and part of a 14-member group, so I need to have a freight car fleet that reflects the New Haven RR and other lines of the late 60’s early 70’s PC.   There are, of course, exceptions to that rule.  

40’ AHM 70’s gon repainted NH. The little red symbol to the left of the reporting marks indicates an injury in the project.  In this case an x-acto knife rolling off and doing a vertical puncture in my foot….just after finishing my decal work….
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50’ Weaver war-emergency gon with light weathering.  No story

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Atlas 53’ gon, 70’s production.  I’ve been fascinated with the Roeblings (of Brooklyn Bridge fame).  When I found an old set of Champ decals it was “game on.”

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another older Atlas 53’ gon repainted for interchange with another operator.
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70’s kit, a bit of a challenge to assemble.

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an old KUSAN gon, stretched in length and width to needed dimensions.

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Atlas 70’s gon (Reading) rebuilt into a P&W 70’s “super gon.”   The sides and ends were made separately and sold by K -Line.  Prototype photos of this car, like many of my fleet, are on rrpicturearchives.net

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last but best is a Lionel gon from a few years ago.  These are great as well, with exceptional detail.

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You might notice I haven’t included MTH gons.  I find they generally sit too high, reducing the prototypical appearance.  Nothing wrong with them, and I do have a couple, they just don’t “spin my wheels” as a manner of speaking.  

Don

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Colorado,

You might try re-working some of those  Intermountain (now Atlas) 40’ gons.  A little paint and some decals can get you there in short order.  I use a light coat of Rustoleum rattle can primer (gray, white, red brick). Followed by a finish  coat of Scalecoat II.  Get a couple cheap old cars for practice and go for it.  

Don

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