I have often wondered what happened to this tooling after the break up of Front Range and Sky Lim or if the kit even made it there. I often wondered if this was just a set of inserts that fit the mold base of the other four plus Front Range 40-foot offering. If the inserts are out there I just wonder why the haven't been run in the owners line of cars. I have heard but can not confirm that the Front Range inserts were aluminum.
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Some of this was due to the fact that at each sale, bankruptcy auction, change of name, some of the hard tooling assets would simply disappear, only to emerge again in a later iteration of the principle's business. This was the case with the center-beam lumber flat (too modern for this list), the GP-9, and the molded on detail boxcar of which you speak.

And yes, all the front range tooling was aluminum. The folks at Front Range always knew that aluminum tooling was perishable, but always figured they would remake parts as needed, since it was all CNC cut directly in the inserts, and they retained the toolpath programs. That changed after the firm's initial (and only, as far as I am concerned) toolmaker left to join Intermountain; then there was no one left who could actually do it.

Consequently, each subsequent owner beat the tooling to death, and then beat it to death again. When we cleaned out the assets from the Sky Lim bankruptcy, we found a literal truckload of the molded on details boxcar bodies, with no roofs or underframes; those tools had died and not been repaired or replaced. The bodies had a rather strange parting line between the sides and ends that followed the curve of the W section corners, these had been flashing badly and we decided the bodies were a total loss; we ground them and reclaimed the styrene.

The separate detail 40' car wasn't much better, and since it essentially duplicated the 40' car we already had in the line, we never did any work on it. Bill and Leon from Red Caboose expressed an interest, but wanted samples run before they would consummate the deal, so I hung the tool at our place, and, to my complete amazement, that old beater started making parts on the first shot. They signed the check.

The fifty foot car package was a floor, ends, and six different pairs of sides, so of course the inserts common to all six of the bodies had six times the wear. The Improved Dreadnaught ends from our own 40' car ere correct for the car, and could be made to work, but that required the body be revised to have the roof molded on the body, rather than the floor. The Front Range roof wasn't anything to write home about anyway, so we tooled a new roof, from steel. I have nothing against aluminum tooling, it has it's place, but high wear items are best done in hard tool steel. The doors are the original Front Range tooling... there were two pair of those Superior plug doors, along with a pair of Youngstown doors and a pair of Youngstown auxiliary doors (mo latch or tack board), all in the same tool, with no way to shut any cavities off. We used to be awash in plug doors every time we ran that tool. Finally found time last year to revise the sprue bushing on this mold, so it now selects only one set of cavities at a time. I took the opportunity to pocket out one pair of the plug doors and install a pair of superior panel doors in their place.

Dennis Storzek