Ffes-pionage

Himself has returned from another undercover spying mission to North Wales, infiltrating a lineside maintenance working party at Rhiw Goch as a means of penetrating the interior of Boston Lodge Works to bring back intelligence reports on the progress in the conversion of the original WHR Winson semi-open into a service carr.

Looking at the pictures smuggled out of Porthmadog it's remarkable how different the carriage looks and how much they've been able to do so quickly.

It looks pretty stark and slab sided without any of the beading in place yet. It's quite unusual and amusing to see a real carriage like this which is more akin to the first stage of my scratch-built carriages (see the guide on the page menu over the right if you haven't read this yet).

Once the beading goes on I'll be ready to start making my model of it.



As you can see one side of the carriage has a big opening. This is the compartment which houses a generator to power the electrical equipment, such as fridges, in the buffet section of the carriage.

The service carriages also includes a toilet compartment and an area for the guard, with a vacuum setter and hand brake etc. As far as I know this concept is another in the long list of FR 'firsts'. I'm sure someone will correct me if I am mistaken.