Paul Washburn's SP GS Gondola
Paul Washburn has built a Southern Pacific GS composite drop-bottom gondola from scratch. These are a few of the photos he shared. All photos copyright © Paul Washburn; used by permission.
Please note that if you would like to have a car like this yourself, a few years after Paul built this one, Pre-Size Model Specialties came out with a kit of this car. You can see it on their web site here.
The first photo shows the underside of the gondola, with all the details Paul has added.
Paul didn't just build one, he built three at the same time!
Here's one of the cars painted and having had decals applied.
A better view of the B-end of the car.
Paul's initial plan was to have permanent loads of sugar beets in these cars. However, as he reconsidered the idea, he was now faced with having to make sure the cars were heavy enough to run well when they are empty. To do so, he added weights, as seen in the middle car in the next photo. However, these weights are unsightly. To resolve that issue, he made paper bottoms.
He printed these car bottoms. The source is an enlarged scan of an HO-scale model he had.
And here is a close-up of the finished project. As you can see, he also printed the interior sides and ends of the model.
References
Signature Press "Southern Pacific Freight Cars Volume 1: Gondolas and Stock Cars" by Anthony W. Thompson