I’m a little late to this thread which has gone on long enough to illustrate the need is still there; and it happens I’m sort of haphazardly embarked on a hopper/gon fleet expansion. It seems to me after you’ve run through your stock of Ace conversion bolsters, and given the alleged demise of Iron Rail, you either start counting noses among the group to raise interest in a substitute or you make your own. Bill Lane could probably whip up a superior solid-works version in half an evening if he were to turn his prodigious intellect to doing so. But then what? Given probable mass, brass may be out of the question unless you engineer a hollow design which could be feasible in brass. In white metal, you have to arrange to make a mold (or get access to Iron Rails’) and hire a caster and that is no easy feat in post-industrial USA. Ah yes, and there is the tapped 2-56 truck screw hole and the tapped coupler holes in the bolster, I think that is why they went to Bakelite for a while. An alternative would be to make a simple pattern and cast your own from resin. The only issue is the various recesses cast into the bottom of the bolster part to clear AF “bulges”. Then you just add a little more sheet lead – alias commode roof vent – to the slope sheets of the hopper or floor of the gondola. It all boils down to time versus money – so while you are counting noses best to ask for a price range that goes along with that demand – I think Iron Rails went out at $16 and change per copy with an AB valve and reservoir included. Viva S scale! Chris
J Chris Rooney [email protected]
