Slowly I have been working with the resin castings for the boxcar and hopper, and building up the models. Which has had a learning curve and a lot to ponder.

The first boxcar built up from the castings is in this first photo next to an original Nason sand-cast aluminum car that came to me in parts. Someone had done some good work with it, drilling a lot of holes and also tapping the holes necessary to assemble the car with machine screws.

With my new resin cast model, I was originally thinking to glue it together. But how? I finally realized that made no sense and added complication, it would be easier for sure to just do it with screws as Nason designed it. This means, however, some of my “good” castings are not real usable as hardly any of the tabs on the back of the sides and ends really filled up well. On one end I cut/sanded the tab off and replaced with square plastic, which worked.

In any case, I did get a first car together. Note that inside I added a piece of strip wood. I think that is the most logical way to hold the roof on, although the builder of the aluminum car was clearly thinking to use a lot of pins to hold the roof in place. It is a nice tight fit, won’t fall off certainly.

Probably I will still super glue the resin body together – maybe just the sides to the ends, leaving a removable floor and a removable roof. Next steps after that include working out ladders and other details of the car, and matching those with the vintage aluminum body. I think in the end you won’t be able, visually, to tell the two models apart.

Next up we have the Graceline hopper, one with my cast sides next to an original in the photo. The sides ended up being about 1/16 inch shorter in length than the original wood block body, so that was modified to suit the sides along with the original frame. The ends are originals from the parts supply and the bolsters are my reproduction castings. It took a lot of puzzling, and a helpful thing to me were the scale drawings in the 1944 Model Railroader Cyclopedia. 

Not seen in the photos are the hopper bottoms on the car in progress. The vintage block bodies I have only have hoppers for triple hoppers with them. I opted finally (shortly after the photos were taken) to make two more hoppers for the pilot model, it will be a quad hopper as designed.

In the final photo is also seen a loose frame for a Graceline hopper. This is a stabilized and rebuilt vintage part that I am hoping to copy next. The idea is to use it to make a complete set of castings for a Graceline reproduction hopper in resin and metal, one that won’t need the wood block body. First though I need to seal it really well and work out details a bit better.

To close, I mentioned these are pilot models. It is fun thinking of them that way anyway. If these end up being castings I can make so well that I feel comfortable selling them or if they are simply a curiosity I give away to OO friends, time will tell.

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