So due to the extreme cold, I was forced to look for other things to tinker with. While digging through my detail bits, I realized most of them were geared towards a logging themed railroad. Now, in the last 6 months, I've been tinkering with On18 trains (O scale [1:48] on N scale [well, HOn30 or HOe in my case] track). I had this little diesel critter lying around with a bad drive unit, so on a whim I replaced it with a Kato 11-103 drive unit.

Today I built these two little steel-frame log cars. They're mostly styrene construction (the center beam is a hollow tube I filled with lead shot for weight) with stake and pockets from Grandt Line, HOn30 trucks from Shapeways, Atlas 36" N scale wheelsets, and Kadee overset couplers.

Turns out most smaller logging groups prefer to haul out logs in the 10-16 foot length range because it does less damage to the surrounding trees and forest. These little log cars are a scale 15' coupler-to-coupler, and have a 4' wide bed to hold logs. Since the average diameter of hardwood log ranges from 10 to 24 inches, one of these cars should be able to take three or four logs. Or a lot of long sticks...