Back in late April I posted about a gondola built by Bill Gilbert. After I posted it, I sent him a copy of the article, and he replied with a short note. In the article, I say the model is wood, but he told me clearly it was not wood.

At the time I was not sure how to respond, as I thought it was wood, and he didn’t sound very well at all.

Sad update

I’ve been thinking of Bill lately for various reasons. Among them, I had several of his models on the layout, and they are just so nice. But I suspected that he might have passed away, did the search, and he had in fact passed in May. He was 88. Obituary here:

William J. Gilbert Obituary

I learned more about Bill there than what I knew, and the video is very nicely done too, including a view of his train basement. Very sincere condolences to his family. I’ve written about this before, I don’t actually know what moved him to write me initially when I was in high school (including giving me this flat car as a high school graduation gift), but I’m very appreciative of the encouragement received from him over the many years.

Another update: It’s not wood

I put out a train of just models he built in his memory. It took me a little while to find that gondola, it was in the shop to fix the load. Then, I looked at the bottom closer …

It’s absolutely not wood! The side posts, you can see clearly that they are U shaped channel that is soldered onto brass sides. Having worked with brass a good bit, this was all big work. Everything you see in the photo is soldered on. How in the world I thought it was wood when I first looked at it, I don’t know. This car must have taken him many dedicated hours to build.

My only explanation was I had too many things going on then, and really wanted to get a quick article up and send it to Bill in thanks. Sigh.

The car seen in the box below it, it is wood and traditionally made. In the shop for repairs. More on that car here.

Oh, and then you may recall from the original article on this model that it got 2nd prize at a meet in 1975 to an OO Diesel. This car for sure took tons of time to build and is built so nicely. Entered it in a contest and, what, another OO brass model beats it? But that’s how things go sometimes.

For now, I’m going to run this car on the layout for a while in every train of the 1960 era. What a nice car. Nothing else like it out there. Exceptional model.

The final photo is from the original article. As mentioned, the load has now been fixed. It’s two large pieces of plastic I beam sitting on 3 timbers in the bottom of the car. Bill was involved professionally with transportation logistics, and the most interesting cars he built are the ones with loads. I’ll try to follow up with something more soon on those.