1920's Coal Car

I recently finished a 1920's coal car for Camp Coal Creations.

When you look at this sculpture, you can see how important the little details are to me. I studied lots of pictures to plan the shape of the car. As I carved, I tried to create the various textures of wood, metal, and mud that you may have seen on a real coal car. As a finishing touch, I pressed real stick pins into the metal supports to give the impression of nails. I felt that the only thing that could look like real coal was coal, so I found small pieces of coal in the fish section of the local pet mart and glued them to the inside of the car.

A mold will be made from this sculpture. Then, lots of coal cars will be formed from the mold.

Camp Coal Creations celebrates our area's coal heritage by forming their sculptures using resin that has coal dust in it. When this sculpture comes out of the final mold, it will look like it has been carved out of solid coal.

In the 1920's, the real coal cars would have been filled with coal from the mines. Then, they would travel on train tracks to various destinations. Coal from our area, may have ended up in places all over the world.