Viaduct patterns and molds for 1:32 garden railroad.

[machiningfool]

Hi Paul, you know me well and as I am writing, I have the brass Federal Hall completely apart and am making a mold for the sides. Boy, if some of the collecters that I met at the auction saw the car now, they would shoot me. I would have had to take it apart anyway because the windows, installed with double back tape came apart and had to be repaired anyway. Some of the installation techniques that were use to make this car were not the best. These techniques were alright for the first few years, but not after 20. It is challenging because it is brass and very thin, so I am having to design the mold to incorporate some thickness for the loss of strength compared to the metal sides. I am not a rivet counter, but I will try to reproduce the model to represent the prototype, keeping in mind that I don't want to spend the rest of my life designing the mold. As soon as I finish the one side of the car mold, I will post some pictures. I use the kiss principle, so one side of the car is different from the other side. One of the sides can be reversed to make both sides of a center car and one of the sides can only be used for the open ended obs. car, so I will only have to make two side molds to make both an observation car and also make more center cars. Then of course there are many more molds to make, including the roof, under carriage parts, trucks etc. I bought an MTH J3 Hudson to pull these cars and I am sure the train will look good. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten the viaducts, because I am taking this time to build the molds for the heavyweights because I don't have enough money to continue the viaducts at this time. Bob.