Tapcho, thank you for your suggestion on building thin tubes with wet paper and the help of 2 sheets of glass. Also using copper wire to bend said tube without introducing a crease.
JohnMGD, thank you for you kind comments. This project is scratch built and who ever wants the patterns can have them. The patterns for silos are already posted in the downloads sections. I’ll post the patterns for the pneumatic bulk trailer and the ACF centerflow covered hoppers together as soon as this project is done.
This project is taking longer than I imagined. I had to change the design of the formers because I had problems hiding weighs inside the car body with the previous design. But I still had the problem where neither the new nor the old former design was rigid enough to withstand handling. In the end, I rolled a couple of layers of card stock into a tube, slid that into the car body, packed the tube with 3.5 ounces of nuts and bolts, wiggled the spline into place and then pushed the formers onto the spline. But that created a new problem where I couldn’t reach behind to adjust the position of the slope sheet. On the prototype, the slope sheet is offset from the edge of the car body. There may be a better and easier way but I switched from glue tabs on the slope shield to glue strips attached to the interior of the car body 1.5 mm from the edge. Then slide the weighted card stock tube and former assembly into the car body. If this was just a static display model, the card stock tube and weights would not be necessary. Anyway, the glue strips inside the car body helped position the slope sheet with the correct offset from the edge.
Next, the rest the brake gear, the walkways and ladders, hatches, vibrator pads, gravity dump discharge outlets and I think we’re done.