Greetings,

I have a small fixture. Due to its age and design, I think finding a similar one in existance is rather improbable. Is there someone out there who might be able to create a replica?

God Bless,
Gerald W. Kopiasz

Heartland Railroad Historical Society
hrrhs@aol.com

> Greetings,

> I have a small fixture. Due to its age and
> design, I think finding a similar one in
> existance is rather improbable. Is there
> someone out there who might be able to
> create a replica?

> God Bless,
> Gerald W. Kopiasz

I assume you are talking about a light fixture - but the base and innards, the glass shade, or both?

There is a rehab company I believe in Portland Oregon (seen on a TV show) that makes reproduction fixtures. They have a building full of patterns, parts, and originals; and can go so far as to make their own castings, plating and finish work. They sell to rehabbers and restorationists and I believe have a retail store. Maybe I saw it on This Old House - if so it is probably listed in the This Old House magazine suppliers index.

If you are also talking the glass, please let me know if you get any good answers. I am interested in a set of 12 Holophane prismatic reflectors (glass lamp shades) for one of our cars, and we also need some headlight glass castings - sort of like fresnel pattern at the sides and bottom. I have considered making an RTV rubber mold for the shades (we have a few originals), and casting a stand-in set from some sort of clear resin, but do not know enough about what to use, how to do it well, and whether there is a resin that will not sag from heat being close to the bulb.

Bob Kutella


68trolley@comcast.net

> Greetings,

> I have a small fixture. Due to its age and
> design, I think finding a similar one in
> existance is rather improbable. Is there
> someone out there who might be able to
> create a replica?

> God Bless,
> Gerald W. Kopiasz
For possible shops in the New Jersey area, you might want to check with Terence Mulligan, who is planning to reproduce three desk and table lamps from the prints of the original Pullman drawings. He has also used E-bay extensively to locate similar furnishings for a very well-known heavyweight car. Contact me off-list and I will check with him to contact you if interested. It is always good to work locally if you can! We are also interested in reproducing lamps for the Dover Strait at the Illinois Railway Museum, so you might want to share the model number if it exists. At the IRM Pullman Library, I have just unearthed four master drawings of 124 lamps and fixtures with minidrawings, model numbers and drawing numbers correlated. Again, contact me if you wish to order these from IRM.
Ted Anderson, IRM volunteer & Pullman Library curator


tedander@core.com

I have some memories of a public TV special on lighthouses where some volunteers were restoring broken elements in a Fresnel lens with cast clear resin. It would be interesting to see how that might translate into railroad glass.

One of my guys in Montgomery is very good at patternmaking and carving, if replication is necessary, and there is a local foundry that does brass and aluminum casting.

dave

irondave@bellsouth.net

Gerald,

The method of casting will depend on the type of fixture ...is it hollow ? does it require a lot of machining or threading ? Several of the hollow pullman car light fixtures that I have are cast using a fill, partially solidify and pour out the remaining liquid to obtain the hollowness, others have an internal core to achieve the same thing.

If you can live with a solid casting you can make a mold from the original piece. If you cannot live with the shrinkage the original underwent while solidifying you can coat the original with a coating (your choice) to build it up to as-cast size, about 3% larger. Since most of the "relief" and filleting is retained in the original you don't have to worry about that (this is part of the design that lets the pattern release from the mold material in the original). One, two or three part molds can be made with latex rubber (see if you can see any original parting lines on the fixture and you will see how they did it). You can use the latex molds to make a wax master for the lost wax casting method. Depending on the foundry you can "tree" a number of the wax castings to make multiple castings in one pour.

lamontdc@adelphia.net

> Greetings,

> I have a small fixture. Due to its age and
> design, I think finding a similar one in
> existance is rather improbable. Is there
> someone out there who might be able to
> create a replica?

> God Bless,
> Gerald W. Kopiasz

Our friend Ted Anderson located the company I referred to at www.rejuvenation.com

Good Luck

Bob Kutella


Rejuvenation, Portland, OR
68trolley@comcast.net