SOME FREIGHT CAR MODIFICATIONS...

[doctorwayne]

I've made some progress on the TH&B gondolas, with most of the major details added, and while the EG&E cinder car got similar details, the outlet doors and hardware still need to be added, along with some "sheet metal" to cover the car's "wooden" floor.

As mentioned previously, I had a plan for creating the ends, and used scraps of Tichy boxcar ends, as shown below, to create the one-piece (lower right) pattern for forming aluminum tape into ends for these gondolas.....


 
However, even with modifications, spacing of the rib-groups was not right, so I created version two, shown below, using Evergreen .060" half-round rod, and various pieces of Evergreen strip, all cemented to a backing of .020" sheet styrene  (the size of the needed ends).   The entire assembly was then cemented to a wider backing sheet, which could be taped to the glass work surface....



I cut a piece from the roll of aluminum tape, and after peeling the paper backing from it, applied it to a piece of ordinary aluminum foil.  This was done to prevent the tape from adhering to the form, as the rubbing and burnishing needed to force the tape into the depressions in the form would otherwise cause to tape to be permanently stuck to the form.  Here's the untrimmed tape, still on the form - I used my fingers and fingernails to press the tape into the corrugations, working up from the bottom of the form, one corrugation at a time...



Unfortunately, when I removed the newly-formed gondola end, in order to trim it to size, I discover that the burnishing action had cut the tape in several places....



A couple more attempts yielded similar results, so I instead created ends, similar in construction to the form, for all five of the cars.  Except for the cinder car, the four gondolas are ready for primer paint (which they'll get when the cinder car is ready, too).  All of the basic details have been added, with a few more to come after they're in-primer...













In retrospect, the all-styrene ends, despite having corrugations only on the outside surface, are a better choice than would have been the foil-tape version, as the styrene ends are readily cemented to the cars' sides, strengthening the whole assembly.  They're also better for holding the grabirons in place, especially when trimming the protruding ends from the interior of the car.

Next up is some "steel" plating (aluminum tape) for the cinder car's "wooden" floor, then the outlet doors and associated hardware.

Wayne