Rapido HO 39030 EMD GP39 Mother & Slug, CSX Bright| ModelTrainStuff

On its customer Web site, the Union Pacific Railroad characterizes a gondola as an extremely sturdy open design for carrying rugged unfinished commodities; its large flat interior design with side walls is described as more flexible than a flat car. These qualities make the modern gondola particularly popular with the steel industry, for transportation of loose materials like scrap metal, waste, coke, and slag as well as finished products like iron or steel plate, pipe, structural steel, and rails for railroad track. Other commodities commonly shipped in these versatile cars include mineral ores, granite slabs, gravel, logs, lumber, railroad ties, and even prefabricated railroad track, also known as panel track.

Until the advent of specialized coil cars in the 1960s, another popular load for gondolas was coiled sheet metal, usually steel, on its way from mills to manufacturers of stamped metal items from car parts to appliances. As depicted on this model, specialized covers similar to the covers later used on dedicated coil cars protected the raw metal from the elements during transit. Brackets on the covers provided a lifting point for an overhead crane and also allowed the covers to be stacked on top of each other when not in use.