"Casting resin tenders…"

The great thing about model railways, is that one day you could be building baseboards, painting a train, or messing around with rubber moulds and Alumilite resin plastic.

As regulars to this blog may be aware, I am currently in the process of building a fleet of A4 Pacifics, and as a prototype I made a model of no.17 Silver Fox. Well, that model hasn't got the right tender type behind it. Until now...

This is a semi-successful first casting of a streamlined 1935 A4 corridor tender. This is intended to go behind Silver Fox, and hopefully will lead to further castings for the rest of the intended fleet of A4s which share this tender type (more than you'd think!)

I will make another attempt later next month with this mould and a two piece one, but for what it is, not bad for a first casting.

Please note that this one is a solid lump of resin! The weight of the piece means it probably won't need metal weights on the chassis when fitted to the Hornby tender frames it is intended for.

I am going to try a two piece mould next month to compare methods. The weight of the solid one means I probably won't need to add metal weights to a set of Hornby frames! The Alumilite resin used is extremely hard. I will clean this prototype up during the course of this and see how it comes out as a tender.

You'll note I left the window moulding on the rear of the tender - will probably just paint the window black and the surround silver. You can't see into the non existent corridor on the Hornby ones anyway…

Until next time!