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are many others out there with their own story regarding their
favorite road.
As with most modelers who follow a specific prototype there are
cars specific to the road that cannot be purchased in any way,
shape, or form. So what do we do? Ignore them (if they’re a very
small percentage of the rolling stock, that’s a possibility), use a
close substitute, kitbash, or scratchbuild the necessary cars?
The groups of cars that I wanted to model represent about 17%
of the Erie’s boxcar fleet on the 1959 OER (Official Equipment
Register) so ignoring them was low on the list as an option for
me. Scratchbuilding was out of the question since I would need
somewhere between 3 to 4 cars from each group. Using some-
thing close didn’t work either because of the unique nature of
the ends and roofs.
So having a problem that I wanted to resolve, I decided to
make my own kits.
This article is a description of my trip into the great unknown
(at least for me) of making masters and casting. My experi-
ence in casting parts is limited. I have cast a few parts before,
but nothing on this scale. So, before we begin the adventure,
a little history.
History
These all-steel boxcars of the Erie fall into two broad catego-
ries, the 1923 ARA design and the 1932 ARA design. The Atlas
website has the following.
“A goal of the American Railway Association (ARA) in the
early 1920s was to produce
an all-steel boxcar that could
be recognized as a standard
by the member railroads.
