I once bought hundreds of pigs to put in my double deck stockcars, and realised that hard plastic pigs don't squeeze together like real flesh and blood creatures. They also added significantly to the weight. I then found lots of pictures taken at ground level of stock cropped the background cut and pasted them till l had an appropriate length herd fixed the on a transparent backing with a mirror image herd the other side and put this in the car. You can see something blocks the view but only with a flashlight and by taking the car off the track can you see they are pigs. I also trap a few wisps of fine straw coloured filament around the lower edge of the door.

I run mine empty. Richard Hendrickson used to put something inside as a view block. I forget exactly what, something like painted packing peanuts, to give an irregular shape if you happened to get them where you could see through the slats. Putting individual figures inside would be extremely expensive. 25 cows would not break you, but 300 sheep would!

 

 

J. Stephen Sandifer

 

From: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io <main@RealSTMFC.groups.io> On Behalf Of Charlie Duckworth
Sent: Saturday, April 2, 2022 11:41 AM
To: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io
Subject: Re: [RealSTMFC] Speaking of stockcars…sharing a trick

 

Staying (somewhat) on topic; while digging through my box of extra freight car parts (I’ve saved the last 40 years) I came across four sets of Walters steers.  Do you run your stockcars with loads of livestock or empty or a mix?  
--
Charlie Duckworth 
Omaha, Ne.