Reinforcing resin house cars An easy approach to avoiding warped sides on boxcars and reefers/Jack Burgess
lthough some resin kits for box- cars and refrigerator cars now include one-piece cast bodies, many of them still require the modeler to assemble the sides, ends, roof and floor into a “box” to which details are then added. A kit with reasonably thick sides and a solid roof which en- gages the sides results in a fairly rigid body that is unlikely to eventually warp. However, kits without a solid roof to hold the tops of the sides in line, and/or which use thin castings for the sides, typically need a way to reinforce the sides to prevent warping. In my experience, styrene strips, even large strips, are too flexible to prevent future warping or, when neces- sary, correct any slight warping of the sides which might have occurred dur- ing shipping or storage. One could cut a piece of .040″ sheet styrene exactly the correct width and length to fit in- side the car but, to be effective, that piece must fit tightly against both sides. Instead, my approach produces the same results with much less exact- ing measuring and cutting. Instead of cutting a single piece of styrene to fit inside the car, two pieces are cut to overlap each other so they can easily accommodate any width variations in the carbody’s interior. As part of the process, a pair of spac- ers is added to the inside of the car to allow the floor to be glued in place later at the correct location in relation to the ends. This step is helpful since once the side reinforcing pieces are in place it can be difficult to glue a floor in place with it accurately aligned with both ends at the same time. The floor spac- ers solve this problem. The side rein- forcement pieces will also rest on these spacers, making it easy to position them for gluing.
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The process starts with gluing the floor spacers in place. Note that describ- ing the process is much more difficult than doing it, but just bear with me and it will all become clear by the end. Also, note that the styrene spacers and rein- forcing pieces should be cut using a ma- chinists square or combination square so the corners are all square.
Floor spacers
Begin by assembling the sides and ends to form the basic carbody but do not add the floor or roof yet. I use a Coffman Original Right Clamp
52 APRIL 2012
(
www.coffmaneng.com) to hold a side and an end in alignment before gluing them together with cyanoacrylate ad- hesive. This allows me to make sure that they line up accurately while also automatically holding them at right angles to each other.
After both
side/end assemblies are done, clamp the two assemblies together with a pair of Original Right Clamps to form the carbody, then complete the box by gluing them together. Once the cyanoacrylate is dry, test fit the floor and file it as needed to fit the box, but don’t glue it in place since you will need both the roof and floor open- ings available for access while later in- stalling the side reinforcing pieces. To fashion the floor spacers, cut a piece of .040″ plain sheet styrene slightly less than the inside width of the car and approximately equal to its inside height. Next, cut the height of
this piece in half, allowing for the thickness of the roof if needed so both spacers are the same height. Clamp a floor spacer inside each end with the bottom of the spacer close to the bottom of the end. Turn the body upside down and put the floor in place so it rests on the clamped spacers and push the floor and the spacers down to the correct position. (If each spacer is clamped against a car side, the floor will automatically be square with the ends.) Once the floor and spacers are accurately located (typically with the coupler pads being even with the bot- tom of the ends), remove the floor and glue the spacers in place using cyano- acrylate.
Side reinforcement pieces The final step is to cut and install the side reinforcement pieces. Cut a rectangle of .040″ sheet styrene barely
The sides and ends of this refrigerator car kit (above) have been glued together. Although the sides of resin kits can sometimes be slightly warped, the sides on this refrigerator car are just flexible because they are thin. The basic carbody (below) is seen with a pair of floor spacers clamped in place. The body is right side up with the floor below it.
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