WARP 10 Car Kits
#1
Hello,

some long time ago, i purchased some unbuilt Westerfield kits. In times of lockdown i had much of free spare time and decided to use this for modelrailroad purposes. So i put these nearly forgotten kits onto my workbench. These are old school flat kits made out of this greyish polyester resind filled with metal powder. 

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This is why i called the thread WARP 10. They all were extreme warped und the resin is also extreme brittle.
Really no shake-the-box-kits.

As i have some Santa Fe affinity, i started with a AT&SF Boxcar first:
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This is the picture on the instruction sheet how it should look alike when it is finished.



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This is what i found in the box.




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And complemented with Kadee trucks and couplers w. boxes.




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Some body told me to spread the warped parts onto a level base and put them adjacent into the baking oven. Temperature about 60°C and let it stay thee several hours. It went well for about 2 hours until wife comes home. Increased eardrum strain.
On the photo there are the parts for three other boxcars also.

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Two of them are Fowler Patent Box Cars.


Lutz
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#2
Lutz none of the pics are loading.
Mike

Sent from my pocket calculator using two tin cans and a string
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#3
Pics loaded fine for me. Love the comment about increased ear strain.

Tom
Life is simple - Eat, Drink, Play with trains

Occupation: Professional Old Guy (The government pays me to be old.)
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#4
(07-07-2020, 06:13 AM)Tyson Rayles Wrote: Lutz none of the pics are loading.

No problems loading here either. Kinda scary though, lots and lots of little tiny parts. Icon_e_biggrin
Don (ezdays) Day
Board administrator and
founder of the CANYON STATE RAILROAD
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#5
(07-07-2020, 04:37 AM)Schraddel Wrote:  ...It went well for about 2 hours until wife comes home. Increased eardrum strain....



Lutz

Thanks, Lutz, that was my second big smile for the day.   Applause Applause Applause 

Wayne
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#6
Hello,

meanwhile my eardrums got better and i can hear my locosounds again, so let's start building. But not all parts were plain, the dwell time in the oven was too short.

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One of the difficulties with this kits is to determine starting points where you can begin the built.
Here one of the starting points were the part of the bolsters which stick out of the underframe. Photo shows the second car.




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The mounted bolsters.




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Next two starting points were a) the sidewall and front wall have the same height and b) they are in an 90° angle to be mounted. Inside is an angle of some Brass piece. For not sticking the brass piece onto the walls, i put a layer of thin PE (Polyethylene) foil between walls and angle.

The next difficulty i ran into was the glueability of the resin. Although i use CA glue, there is no immediately stick. No Sirs, CA reacts here in this case like ordinary plastic glue and needs some hours (!) to harden. So every glueing operation taks some hours to cure before you can make the next step.




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In the evening the previous bondings were cured, so i was able to assemble underframe, one sidewall and one end wall. Using a lot of CA and made a fixature. This is overnight curing.


Lutz
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#7
nice save , some years back (like 8 or 10) some one gave a westerfield  kit don't remember what it was but opened box and it was a twisted mess the guy i got it from had stored it in a 
uninsulated metal building in Arizona for some time,  after looking at it i donated to the round can. don't have the patience you do.
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#8
Hello,



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Here two Car bodies, made out of the not so warped parts, were half done. The sides had still the tendency to bend inbound, so this was prevented by inserting som kind of quick and dirty frames. Lateron, when the roof is mounted, you will not see them anymore, so their appereance does not matter.
The AT&SF car was rather nice straightforward built because the parts were fairly straight.
The CP car was not so. At one corner the height of the side was not matching the height of the end. A glued stripe of thin (0,3mm) styrene sheet was applied. Later this stripe could be filed down to match the height.




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First attempt to replace the brittled away door rail cover.




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CP car. Drilling and dry mounting of the grab irons. Here they are made mostly out of steel.




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AT&SF car. To align the grab irons in  a quick and easy (i am lazy) manner, i sharpened a suitable styrene stripe on one end. Push this sharpened end unter the dry mounted grab irons and they all are positioned in exact the same distance from the wall.




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CP car. There are still some small parts to mount (or not). Not all of the CP cars hat the reinforcement angles or additional hatches.
The most grief was caused by the door rails. Extreme thin, extreme long for their thickness and the resin ist extreme brittle. Huh


Lutz
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#9
Great work, Lutz, as usual.

I had similar problems with a couple of older Westerfield kits, and while I didn't have too much problem with warped parts, the brittle material posed some challenges.  I found that in may cases, it was easier to remove details that were partially damaged or mostly missing, and simply replace them, using either other commercially-available parts or self-fabricated ones, made either from styrene or metal....whichever was most suitable.

Among a whole bunch of other stuff, there's a similar Westerfield Fowler boxcar build (with an improvised "improvement" later in the thread) and a Westerfield Norfolk & Western old-time hopper, which almost got the better of me. 
If folks have some time to waste, the thread can be found HERE.

Wayne
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#10
Hello,

@Wayne
There i had time to waste and have reed your posts. Yes your Westerfield Fowler CPR boxcar is the same as mine. Further i presume whenever one of these old Westerfield cars made of brittle resin falls down from the layout onto the floor, fetch swab and dustpan, salvage trucks and couplers (no demounting necessary) and the rest disappears into the dust bin.


@All
Next task was to built the second CPR Fowler car:

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Starting with two walls and the bottom plate. The pieces of PE foil were cuts from the plastic bag which contains the small parts of the kits.




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After several hours passed, the second side was mounted. Look how ist is still warped.




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Again several hours later, to straighten out the warping, some robust frames were created.




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And this was my solution to handle the brittle door rails. I glued them onto the brass stripes laying in the kit's box. My hope ist this reinforcement will give enough strenght for this delicate parts.



Lutz
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#11
Necessity is the Mother of invention, Lutz, and you're doing very well on that subject.   Applause Applause Applause

Wayne
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#12
Yes Wayne,
this can be accentuated again and again.

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In the case of the heavily warped end wall of one of the CPR Cars, is had to take arbitray measures.
First glueing a 4 x 4mm square rod onto the inner side of the end.




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Then glueing two pieces of 1.5mm sheets onto the sides of the rod. Let the glue harden out.




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You will get a fairly straigt end wall. The massive installations will prevent the wall to bend again ond over the days, weeks and years, the resin will cure and straighten out strainless.




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There are now 2 1/2 car bodies made and i started to prepare the roofs for them.
I decided not to use the petite frames which were in the kits. Too weak and too brittle to straighten the warped roof halves. Instead i took some pieces of 0.5mm styrene sheets, bend them into the needed angle and glued one of the roof halves onto them.




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Here in the foregound the running boards were mounted.
Behind the second half of a further roof is asssembled.




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With this CPR car, not only the end wall was stubborn, i had to file the bottom shorter to match the lenght of the sides.




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At least the third car body was done. The PE foil was stubborn to remove, so i left it were is was.
The brittled away door rail cover was restored by an brass stripe.


Lutz
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#13
Hello,

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Next were doors and door rails. The with brass stripes reinforced door rails were quite stable.
I measured the distance between sidewall and door how much space is there between.It was 0.8mm here and i cut some 0.8mm styrene sheet to fit into the door space.




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So the thin door castings were glued full faced and will have no chance to warp anymore.

Note: Here the doors are those areas where you will grab the car inevitable with your 5-finger crane to handle it. Icon_e_ugeek




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The straightened and reinforced door rails were then an easy task to mount.


Lutz
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#14
(07-23-2020, 11:14 AM)Schraddel Wrote: ....Note: Here the doors are those areas where you will grab the car inevitable with your 5-finger crane to handle it. Icon_e_ugeek

You're right, Lutz, and if the doors aren't required to be working doors, then it's best to not make them fragile.

A friend gave me a Proto boxcar that he had bought, second-hand, at a train show.  It had been very sloppily assembled, and it took some effort to dismantle and clean it before it could be re-assembled

The doors on these cars are quite thin, and, as you've mentioned, rather fragile to be at the place where most of us would grasp the car in order to pick it up.
To prevent further damage, I added sheet styrene over the inside of the double-door openings, then cemented more sheet styrene into the now-closed opening, matching the thickness of the car's sides.
The cleaned-up doors were then cemented directly onto that material....

   

...and after a few more repairs, the now-sturdier car was back in service...

   

Wayne
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#15
Hello,

@Wayne
So you created your own grabbing-safe cars.


@All

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Next were these tiny reinforcement angles. In the course of my exploratory researches i found photos showing some of these CPR cars have them wile other have them not. So i decided one of my kits will will get them mounted and the other not.




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First attempt to glue them. Not just right in angle  Nope




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Drill and tap for the truck mounts.




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Mounting grab irons.




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Shortening and mountig grab irons onto the end walls. The grab irons were mostly made out of steelwire.




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And for grabbing safety i fall back to A-Line steps. Not 100%meticulous, but grabbing-safe.


Lutz
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