Making Brick Loads for Flatcars With Model Builder and Brickyard

Brick Loads With Model Builder

A BIG Thank you to: Sandor Feldman MD
Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics
    for this very informative article!

To start this project, I printed off the Samples of all Materials from the Brickyard Main Program in my scale. Selected scale is N 1:160

Building Material Selection Screen

I then chose several which in N scale and considering the physical size of the loads would provide the most visual details of the bricks in print.


Switching to Model Builder, I pulled up the Brickyard Brick Pallet and selected my bricks.

Brickyard Brick Pallet

The size of the loads were based on wood sticks obtained from Micheal's Crafts 1/2x1/4 and 3/16x1/2. I used lengths of 3/4" ( I did the math). I used crop/paint to size out the top and sides of the load.
For the ends I used stretch to change the shape of the bricks and came pretty close ("close enough for N scale government work") to look like the end of the pallet. I had a pallet of brick left over in our back yard from a project to reference.
One tip -my measurements were set tp actual feet.
I then went back and change actual feet to actual inches and added 3-4 scale inches to each front/ side/ top. This gave me some play room when gluing since the wood blocks had slight variations and not necessarily true cuts. i used a razor to trim the extra paper off the block. actually most times the fudge factor was needed. i used tacky glue-clear gel- worked great- it let me slide the strips of paper and i could line the edges up nicely. using 1/2x/1/4x3/4 length (inches) was perfect for fitting 3 loads ( i made the 2 high for total of 6) on to a flat car. i used chalk as you suggested to cover up bare areas and then used challk to weather the loads ( i weather everything with chalk-flat cars loads buildings etc-primarily have a box of chalk-earth tones). i used formalin 1/32 painted metallic aluminum to band the loads. i cut up some pallets from pola to place the loads on and then on the flat car.. i used wider (actually too wide) formalin painted metallic cooper to secure the 2 high loads to the flat car