Structure - Albany Tomato Company (part 7)

I haven't touched this building in probably close to a year, and there were two good reasons (at least I tell myself that) for this. First, we moved last year and I had to pack up lots of my stuff for the trip. Second, I ran into a stumbling block: the windows.

I had told myself that everything on the structure would be scratchbuilt for maximum points in the NMRA contest judging. However, as time when on I realized I wouldn't get it done by the time of the convention so I just gave up on it. Once I moved, I unpacked all my old TOFC flat car and trailer kits, my cabooses, and other such gems and decided to work on them instead. I even had purchased some IHC heavyweight passenger cars painted in the D&H's "1939 World's Fair" scheme and I added some weight and details to them, body mounted the couplers, installed metal wheels, etc. And they don't even fit with my layout, much less have a real prototype for some of the cars! Yup, I was avoiding the ATC with everything I could muster. But, I have essentially run out of kits to do. So...

My wife told me "Don't rush the project- do a good job, even if it takes longer" and I agreed with her. Because these are recessed masonry windows, the window openings need to be cut perfectly as the edges of the window castings won't hide any mistakes. I think I did a reasonably good job with that. But, now I plan to buy castings instead of make them so I have run into another issue: the castings I buy must match the holes I cut. Doh! Whoever said "Don't cut your windows until you have the castings you are using in hand" was correct."

So, I printed out the catalogs from Tichy Train Group (website) and Grandt Line (website) and got to work. There was a little overlap, but for the most part either one or the other had what I needed but not both. I will need to place two orders. For my large upper windows, I need over a dozen and neither offers an exact match in size. I don't know how close they will be, and whether I can make them work by slighting opening the window or narrowing the window. We shall see.

However, it is nice to be able to make some progress on this building.