--
Tim O'Connor
Sterling, Massachusetts

Yes, it took real guts to handle these cars. Not so much to model them.
Bob Chaparro
Hemet, CA

Or back in the day where meat processing offal was carried in gondolas.
There were a few brakemen who encountered a not so pleasant "surprise"
--
Ken Akerboom

When brakemen had to ride the cars to apply the brakes I imagine they had to walk through gondolas.

I used to heat my home with a wood stove that burned scrap 4x4's from gondolas. I've been in and out of hundreds of them, a few of which had floors as bad or worse than the picture. The ribs in the car end can be used as steps to climb out. Some cars with a flat plate on the interior of the ends have rectangular holes cut in the plate to serve as steps.

There was a derailment near Pittsburgh caused by a piece of scrap metal that fell through a defective floor and prevented the truck from turning on a curve.

Rules now prohibit trainmen from riding inside loaded gons due to the shifting hazard..

Mark Vinski

if we take this practical issue and extrapolate to its impact on train crew, i wonder whether it would result in some thought about placement of those treacherous loads in a train.  Maybe where front and tail end crew shake hands in the middle?  Just wondering - I have no reason to think this was seen.

I think I have off handedly commented when talking about open-top load cars - like gons. 
     My modeled railroad - regarding drop bottom gons, had some extended correspondence about the damage to the drop bottom doors done by the
teeth of clam shell buckets being used to unload coal and other commodities. The teeth would grab at the protruding corners of the doors and buckle them,
and damage in other ways so as to render the doors no longer useable. Corrugated doors were noted to promote the teeth to slide over them and sustain less damage. 
    In the summer when gondola cars were in commercial usage, my railroad tried laying heavy timbers on the floor, IIRC, 6 x 12 inch timbers laid flat, as sacrificial flooring. 
Equipping a good number of cars and the tight fisted and frugal nature in spending of my railroad, the benefits must have out weighed the cost. Part of the above conversation I found. 
Gons were typically loaded over the trucks so to see boards missing there, could have well been done by clamshell bucket teeth after being dropped into the car. 

I think damage like this is more common than thought. 

      Elden, why would this car not be sent to the nearest RIP track?
Should a brakeman or some other person be walking through the car at night, for any reason, and injure themself, it would be a slam dunk lawsuit. And something car inspectors would call out the moment they saw it. Having paged through more than a few railroad investigations, I could see folks who would have had their career ended had they noted this car, someone got injured and they not flagged it.   
      Given the building to the left looking like a railroad structure, might this be a RIP track photo documenting in preparation for a invoice to be sent out.    
                                                                                                                                                                                           James Dick - Roseville, MN 
  

Somehow, this fired the imagination a bit: how would you model a gon rolling along in a train while on fire .  .  .