Hi Bob; I've seen a couple of articles on "denting" plastic cars. Generally, you want to use a "spot" heat source, like a night-light on an extension cord or a large soldering iron. Hold it near the panel to be dented until the plastic begins to soften, then push out on the plastic with a small screw driver or other tool. Touching the heat source to plastic must be avoided. This obviously takes some time, as each panel must be done individually.
Bulged ends can be made the same way, or the car end can be held over the heating element of a stove and pushed out from the inside once softened. Bulged ends can be applied to boxcars too, the result of a loose load. One or two on a layout is probably all you need, whereas nearly all gondola's could be dented! Trying to heat the whole car at once is probably a recipe for disaster, as you found! I'm not sure if I'm up for denting my brass War Emergency gon or not - haven't made the other small mods I need to make yet either! Pieter E. Roos --- On Thu, 3/15/12, Bob Werre <[email protected]> wrote: Pieter, That's a superb article that warrants some further reading. I once tried to obtain something similar using the AM mill gon and the little wife's oven. I'm certain that I started with a magazine article to start, but I ended up with what would resemble a very curled potato chip--this looks like a much better way of doing this. However I dare any of us to take our brass GS, War Emergency or even Bill Lane's Pennsy models and do the same kind of hammering! Once in awhile I get to work on a project involving the real railroads or industries served by them. One was a local recycle'r; aka scrap-yard. They positioned gons similar to the one's featured in that article inside large buildings. Overhead cranes with the magnetic attachments loaded the cars. I had to ask them to position one of the cars differently, as a SP MP 1500 had just dropped them off and left to work another area of the facility. My "go-to guy" said no problem but just brought in a typical front end loader that less than gently, positioned the car by shoving on the corner of the car, thus explaining the dents in the corners also. Same client on another day, during a heavy downpour outside, needs brought back a different switcher to again remove loads and position empties. Every time the engine (a very tired vintage SP SW??) would leave or enter the building, runoff water would dump on that poor engine. I've seen less steam arise from a steam engine in cold weather. The whole gym sized building was filled repeatedly with steam vapor--sometimes photography is just darn interesting! Bob Werre PhotoTraxx
