Well, now that I have relearned my camera settings, I was finaly able to get a good shot! This is the Wood Fuel Load I made by hand for my MDC 2 Truck Shay. It's a tedious and time consuming process but as you can see, the end result is fantastic!

If some of you wish to attempt to build one yourself, here is how I built mine. First I collected and gathered a veriety of twigs and sticks under 1/4 inch in diameter. Also try to fined the straitest ones you can and with as little branches and knots as possible. To cut into scale "Firewood" you'll need an Exacto Knife with a sharp blade and a pair of tweezers. Start at one end of a stick and trim the end so it's clean and flat. Some woods tend to be harder than others. Some you can easily cut the sticks into desired lengths and others are more dificult. I found that by carefully pressing the knife on top of the stick and at the same time roll it back and forth. You should leave a grouve as you roll the stick. The grouve should line up with itself when rolled all the way around.

Continue to do this and the grouve will become deeper, bet be carefull to not press too hard. If you do the length of stick might shoot off somewhere never to be found! So pause and check your work, while doing so genlty apply pressure as if to snap the length off. If you do snap it at the cut that's fine. Make sure both ends of the length are fairly smooth, though slight roughness is alright. I bilt this Wood Load for HO Scale/Gauge, I tried to keep my wood lengths between a Half Inch and 3/4 inch.

Next up is the tricky part, actually splitting the wood! This is where the tweezers come into play. Take the length of wood and stand it vertically on end. Steady it with the tweezers and make sure it wont go anywhere. Then with the exacto knife you want to split the peice in half. Go by eye and place the blade across the wood as best to center as possible. The apply a little pressure and carefully rock back and forth. Don't apply too much pressure/force, things can go bad VERY fast if you do so. I learned that the hard way.

Once the wood is split in two we now must cut it into quarters. It may seem intimidating but it's not that hard. Now this time lay the peices flat, bark side down and split side up. Again steady with the tweezers and again thry to cut right down the middle with same same technique as before. Using a small container, like a spare camera film canister, you can store the peices you've made. Repeat all the following steps until you have a considerable amount of "Firewood".

Now as for building the wood load I pulled out a peice of white blank paper. I made 2 bottom rows of wood the inside width of my tender. Then I glued, one by one, peices of wood atop the bottom row and used the tweezers to help place each peice. As for glue, use Super Glue Gel!!! Regular liquid super glue will run and tends to be absorbed by the wood fibers, this causes a poor bond. The gel will bond each peice together better and more strongly. But you only need a little at a time. As long as the peice you just placed is in contact with 2 others with gel you've got a good bond. Build up one row at a time, for every row in length you will want some of your wood peices to overlap onto the next as you build in height. Once the glue has dried it will seem fragile, and it is to an extent, but it should hold together very well.

Since my wood load was made for a Shay locomotive it's fairly small and only 2 rows in length. On tender locomotives there will be more rows and obviously greater lengths. You can modify the way you build up your load to suit the features of your locomotive's tender or fuel bunker.

I hope you all like and I hope this will help some of you in your own modeling quests.

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