I am working on the Walthers 2-Stall enginehouse (HO) and want to make an additional truss for the roof panels. I have strip styrene that closely matches the dimensions of the kit’s one truss, but notice that the original is much stiffer than the strip styrene I have. Are these models made with the stronger ABS plastic that Evergreen and Plastruct sell?
If anyone has built their own HO plastic roof trusses and can share some tips or comment on the plastic strength issue mentioned above, I would appreciate it.
As always, thanks in advance for any advice.
A pleasant Memorial Day weekend to all. Please take a minute to say a quiet thanks to fellow vets who served, are now serving and those who passed in years gone by.
You might consider A: Doing a resin casting of the original part, or B: Contacting Walthers about extra pieces. I’ve also found that I can bottom feed on Ebay and find structures in various states of repair that I can scavenge for parts.
You may want to look into Plastruct, they make all sorts of styrene components such as I beams, C channel, box channels etc. They are actually a catalog for architectural modelers who need the scale details. They do carry a line of model railroad specific items but they are a gold mine of extremely useful materials. Chances are your LHS may carry their stuff if not you can order on line.
I used their structural components to do something similar to what your doing but it was on a Walther round house. I always add extra cribbing or braces to the corners of my models so I figure why not use stuff that looks like it belongs there rather then wood and scrap pieces of styrene.
Ron, the kit’s trusses are strong simply because they’re trusses. Once you assemble that similarly-sized strip styrene into a truss, it should be just as strong as the ones in the kit.
While these roof trusses (built for a blast furnace cast house about 40 years ago) are built-up from basswood structural shapes (I wasn’t aware of any in styrene at that time), they work on the same principle as any truss: the combination of lightweight shapes, suitably braced, and held together with gusset plates (mine are sheet styrene) will result in a structure much stronger than its individual members.
When you assemble the truss, be sure to use a suitable solvent-type cement, not ca.
