Aurora Miniatures HO scale gondola

The Aurora Miniatures HO scale

National Steel Car 3,650-cubic-foot capacity gondola is the latest North American freight car in the manufacturer’s product lineup. The newly tooled car, available for the first time as a massproduced model, was designed using a variety of prototype resources.

The sample we received

is decorated as GNTX 295512, part of TTX’s 295500 through 296099 series built by National Steel Car in Hamilton, Ont., Canada, between August and December 2012. Cars from this group are used to handle scrap metal; railway track material; and a variety of finished metal products, including bars, billets, blooms, pipe, plate, rods, and tubing. The gondolas in this series don’t have lading anchors on the top chord tube.

The car is part of TTX Co.’s NSG21 class. N is for the builder, National Steel Car. S indicates service (steel or scrap loading). G stands for gondola. 21 is the design number (66-foot GNTX gondola with 6-foot-high sides).

The Aurora Miniatures gondola

features an injection-molded plastic body. A few details, like the route card holders and Automatic Car Identification tags, are molded. However, the majority of the parts are separately applied, such as the wire grab irons and handrails, reinforcement plates at the bottom of the triangleshaped exterior posts, and see-through etched-metal crossover platforms. The handle end of the plastic uncoupling lever is attached to a bracket secured to the bottom of the car. The opposite end fits in a notch in the draft-gear box cover.

The gondola has 100-ton Barber S-2-HD trucks molded in a grimy black plastic with raised foundry data and brake beams. Features like the reporting mark and road number on the truck sides and rotating blue Brenco class K bearing caps further reinforce the premium quality of the model.

A steel weight, painted to match the body color, accounts for a good chunk of the model’s 4.5 ounces. The smooth interior is a blank canvas for adding some rust weathering with paints and washes. There’s also plenty of room to add a load.

Our review sample

is neatly painted flat black. The lettering placement matches prototype images that I found online. All but the tiniest stencils are legible under magnification. Following the prototype’s lead, the yellow FRA-224 stripes closest to the side grab irons are 8 x 18 inches, while the intermediate stripes are 4 x 18 inches. The National Steel Car builder’s decals between the first and second grab irons are nice touches.

The model is equipped with plastic AuroraJanney scale couplers that are .030" low on both ends. For those who use between-the-rails magnetic uncoupling, note that the couplers don’t have trip pins. A painted plastic train line hose, with the glad hand and adapter picked in silver, is attached to the side of the draft-gear box.

The blackened, machined metal 36" code wheelsets are correctly gauged. At 4.5 ounces, the gondola is 1.1 ounces too light per National Model Railroad Association Recommended Practice 20.1.

I tested the car on our Milwaukee, Racine & Troy and Wisconsin & Southern layouts. The gondola ran without incident while being moved around the interchange yard at Jones Island on the MR&T and in a freight train on the WSOR main line. For the most part, the AuroraJanney couplers worked well with other couplers. There were a few times I had to coax the plastic scale couplers to work with standard couplers.

The gondola’s dimensions match or are within scale inches of data published in the April 2023 edition of the Official Railway Equipment Register (S&P Global, 2023). I was able to get the car to navigate the 18" radius curves on our Beer Line layout, but the overhang wasn’t very realistic. At 91 ⁄4" inches long, the gondola will look and operate much better on 22" or greater curves.

Aurora Miniatures is the first

company out the gate with an HO scale model of the NSC 3650 gondola, and the manufacturer has set the bar pretty high. The long gondola will certainly stand out in a train, and if your layout is near eye level, the underbody details will be appreciated by operators and visitors. Since these are pool cars, the gondolas can be found throughout the North American rail system. If you model any time from August 2012 to the present, you’ll definitely want to take a look this contemporary freight car. — Cody Grivno, senior editor