Scale Model Railway frieght cars

Are the cars on your shelf cast in bronze rather that aluminium, its so cool to see the patterns for these. They look to be metal patterns fit to the wooden block?    cTr....( Choose the Right )

Here is a Scale Model Railways boxcar from the AAR-10-A mold, which interestingly has a refrigerator car side with a box car side along with an "A" and "B " car end.

Another photo shows the roof and underframe mold.  This car was built from five aluminum casting I was given several years ago to see what I could do with them.  The roof was one of them, but I did not get an underframe casting, so I made one along with a wood floor for this box car. The roof, sides and car ends were epoxied together, and not fitted over a wooden block. Modern adhesives make building these old cast aluminum models a lot easier than it was in the1930's!

Yes, I know I posted these photos before. However, this thread specifically mentions Scale Model Railways.

In addition, I've included a cast aluminum two bay USRA hopper which is also built with aluminum castings like those in the first photo of the Scale Model Railways molds. This 80+ YO model has a commercially made coal load for the Intermountain two bay hopper, and it fits perfectly.

S. Islander

I love the history!

Me too - I have an ice car made the same way - exquisite, for a doorstop.

At least we know that, if we ever find a sand foundry we can make more.

@Carey Williams posted:

Hello all .. Scale Model Railways of Huntington ,Inc makers of RTR and kit O scale engines from 1935-40 adds cast alumium frieght cars in 1938 ...

Postwar the cars are offered again for a short time ...sold out of Wheaton ,IL...may have been Bill Lenoir ...who also may have designed the cars initially.

Here are the molds for several of the cars

Cheers Carey

those patterns ( Sand casting ) are quite nice  do you have photo's of the back sides?  You could cast them in bronze or bass but they will weigh a ton

Here are the back if the molds

very nice, again they could be reproduced

They could but I would almost bet even a friendly mom and pop foundry would still have to charge enough to make the additive cost of a complete car prohibitive.  OTOH it wouldn't take much to get a couple of quotes for say 25 sets of parts for example.  It would be very cool, but still your taking as cast parts that have to be cleaned, trimmed, etc, considerable work.  When you can still find originals that need rebuilt or mostly complete for $25-50 who's going to spend a $100 on a new kit of parts?  Small market but still at the same time when you have the patterns it could be done in theory.

All that said, $3.75 for the hopper kit from my 1940 Megow catalog converts to about $75 today for just the kit....  Still probably not many takers at that price if one could even swing it.

I think there's more than enough Originals still left in the world to supply the demand

Or we could fire up the time machine, fill our pockets with some loose change, and we will step back in time. I love a good inflation busting idea.           cTr...( Choose the Right )