Well, now we're in the waiting period for the primer on the floor assembly to dry/cure, so I thought this would be a good time to start on the gon load. And that will be cinders as I had mentioned before. I used the ol' tried & true method of foam core load making. Lots of Youtube videos on this subject.
With my substitute floor I traced & cut a piece of 1" pink foam. This hacksaw blade holder I had as a holdover from my mechanic days, very handy for cutting foam with a minimal of mess. The blade length is adjustable.
I have an Intermountain 50' 6" war emergency gondola that I used to trim & shape the foam to before painting.
Trimmed & painted. I used the cheapy folkArt paint full strength to cover the foam---don't want pink showing!
While this dries, I'll sort out some cinders for the load. I didn't want pit run, I wanted a fairly consistent size for the load, around the HO one foot size. All the screens that I have, sift to the order of 3-4 inches on down to dust. I had bought a 3 piece screen set some time back, so I took one of those and an awl, and pushed a set of holes thru the screen that would let scale 12 inch cinders through.
I picked out the larger red cinders before crushing the rest. I didn't want the red overwhelming the black, I left the black cinders in for contrast.
Left to right....3 ft size, 1 ft size, 3" & down