Sep/Oct 2021
Since the Bodie Foundry was such a large structure, I have presented it in two issues of the GAZETTE. I discussed the history of the foundry in the July/August issue and presented plans for the Machine and Pattern Shop. Here I present plans for the Molding Shop along with photos of my HO scale model of the foundry.
When I started to draw the plans for the foundry, it looked like there was only one building, but when I got to the south elevation, I discovered that the roof line would not work out, so I divided the foundry into two buildings. Later I found an article that mentioned that the Pattern and Machine Shop were separate from the Molding Shop. I have found no information as to what occurred between the two buildings. I estimate they were about eight feet apart. There was a Blacksmith Shop on the lower floor of the Machine and Pattern Shop, and boiler and 20hp steam engine which ran all the machinery in the Machine Shop and the wood working machinery in the Pattern Shop through a belt and pulley system. I added a personnel door that entered the Blacksmith Shop, plus two freight doors in the Machine Shop, one into the Pattern Shop, one into the Molding Shop and one into an area on the southwest corner of the Molding Shop.
The Molding Shop was a little higher than the Machine and Pattern Shop, but did not have a second floor. In the Molding Shop, you would be handling hot molten metal, so a tall ceiling would make sense, and I have read a mention of a sophisticated crane within the Molding Shop. I suspect this was an overhead crane that had some side movement to move molds, hot metal, and the finished casting from one part of the floor to another.
I extended the loading dock so that material and finished products could be moved between the two buildings and this would give access to the traveling crane from the Molding Shop.
While the finished model is large, it would look at home with the unloading area serving both rail and wagon and/or truck traffic. In Bodie, the nearest railroad was about a mile east of the Foundry.
