MOTW - Toastrack carr

With the 009 Society recently releasing a specially commissioned kit for the Colonel Stephens era FR / WHR 'Toastrack' semi-open carriages (exclusively available to members) it seems an opportune time for me to show off mine.



This model was sort of scratch built and sort of kit bashed about a decade ago. A Parkside Dundas kit for the FR's 1970's built semi-opens 37 & 38 provided the bogies, the main chassis and the seats.

The sides and ends I made myself from styrene. The hoops were bent from wire and glued on one by one.

The carriage I modelled is FR number 39, which is a replica built by Winson Engineering in the 1992. (One of the original carriages - number 42 survives and has been restored to service at the WHHR) It is shown it the condition it first ran. If it were truly accurate it should have tiny safety chains across the doorways but I reckon it would be very hard to find any that wouldn't look overscale.

In recent years the carriage has been fitted with small mesh doors and painted in a dark green livery which, to my mind, is not as attractive as the two tone scheme it is shown with here.

On The Bridge

Himself has been continuing with work on the 'bridge to nowhere' which will be a feature of the front left corner of Bron Hebog.

All the (styrene) stone cladding has been added to the wooden formers - which he tells me was a lot of work - and just the parapet stonework remains to be done.





Himself says he has it on good authority (A1 on the Bletchly Park scale) that an RT bus will fit under the real bridge so he's been using a 4mm Routemaster to help scale the model arch.



The completed bridge will then be sent off to the Artistic Director for painting.

If you take a look at some of the pictures in the gallery you'll see the fabulous job he's already done with the bridges at the north end of the station. His subtle mixing and application of acrylic paints really make these look like one hundred year old structures.

Behind The Mask

A brief update with pictures of progress on the paint job on 116 and 114.

The masking tape has been removed now. On 116 the doors have had their first coat of cream on the lower panel to complete the 'Battenburg' effect, but the window frames have been edged in bare metal and black respectively....



There's still the black on the ends and solebars and the dark grey on the roof required to complete the exterior paintwork.



As all modellers will know, painting is a very time-consuming process. Not necessarily because of how long it takes to apply each coat, but the period required for each colour to dry and be safe for handling before adding the next bit.

A Cover-Up

It's not often I use masking tape when painting my carriages, but 116 is an exception. Nearly all other FR and WHR carriages have a line of beading which separates the maroon colour from the cream, but 116 is completely flush.

The stuff I'm using (cos I know folk are interested in these things) is a roll of orange stuff I bought donkeys years ago at the Glasgow exhibition. It's got the name 'Eurostar' on the cardboard ring inside - the same as the Chunnel choo-choos.

I began the painting with the maroon before masking off the join...



And here's it is after a couple of coats of cream..



116 also has the latest reverse livery on the doors, but I can't add the cream on the lower door panels until the tape has been removed.

You'd Better Sit Down....

It may come as a shock to you - it certainly did to me! - but Himself has being doing some work on the layout. (I think it may be over 18 months since the last session on it)

He's sent a few pictures of his progress on the 'bridge to nowhere', the impressive stone arch that guards the southern approach to Beddgelert village and is a relic of the aborted PB&SSR scheme.



The bridge is being built using a plywood base with embossed styrene stonework on top.

Here's the central section of the bridge..




And a shot of the wingwalls in the process of being bent...



Let's hope it won't be another year and a half before I post the next update!

MOTW - Prince

I've been pondering for a while whether our venerable 'Prince' is a fit and proper subject for a Model Of The Week post? I've decided to include it though, because the intention when I began was that this would build into a kind of online stockbox, and we all start our modelling somewhere, don't we? There's no shame in a 20 year old model that continues to give sterling service on the exhibition circuit, even if it doesn't look as good as the latest stuff.



Prince was our second 009 model. It's a Langley whitemetal kit on an Ibertren chassis - which is now powered by a Mashima motor. There are two main issues with the Langley kit. I believe it's supposed to represent Prince as he first ran under the new administration in the 1950's, so almost every part of the locomotive is undersize to represent the modern Prince, which emerged from Boston Lodge after a rebuild in 1980 not so much a Small England but an England-on-steroids!

As well as being too small all round the cab roof is the wrong shape - it shouldn't turn down so much at each side, even on the 1950's Prince the roof profile was flatter.

The other challenge is the quality of the whitemetal castings. The loco body is divided along the centre in two big castings each with half a smokebox, saddle tank and cab. The problem we've always found - and we've built three of these kits - is that one half has usually shrunk more than the other, sometimes failing to match up by as much as 1mm.

Our Prince represents the locomotive as running in the early 1990's with the obtrusive large capacity oil tanks in the tender (which have since been removed in favour of a much more subtle arrangement.

For me the weakest aspect of the model is the lining, which was done by hand by Himself with a bow pen two decades ago. Many times I have considered nagging him into dunking it in paint stripper and doing it again with some fine waterslide lining. What prevented this more recently was the purchase of a Mercian etched brass kit for the England engines which was intended to replace our faithful 'Old Gent'. But to date Himself hasn't got any further than soldering together a tender before getting distracted by NGG16's, Lyd and all the carriages that I keep sending down from Scotland for painting.

So our old Prince carries on in frontline service, bless it.

Glad Tidings

And so to the third of the trio of contract carriages I’ve been working on - the NWNGR / WHR ‘Gladstone’ observation carriage.

I’ve always been a bit of a hoarder so it’s always gratifying when something you’ve been storing for nearly 20 years comes in handy, in this case a book of 7mm drawings of WHR stock. I first bought them when a kind fellow modeller was helping me scratch build a chassis for a Chivers ‘Russell’. (He did 90% of the work and I did a bit of the filing on the frames, coupling rods and cranks) Anyhow, the book it was just the job when I was asked to knock up a ‘Gladstone’ in styrene.



Compared to some of the FR carriages with all their beading and rounded windows this one really is a bit of a doddle.




Very unusually for my carriages this one has fixed internal divisions which help a lot with strength and keeping the shape, this is due to the carriage’s open / closed / open design.




There’s not really too much to say about the build of this one, it’s rather straightforward.

Of more interest, to me at least, is its nickname of the ‘Gladstone Carriage’, so-called because the Victorian Prime Minister is believed to have travelled in it during a holiday in Nant Gwynant.

It’s strange how there is this connection between Liberal leaders and the FR / WHR.

Some wag once suggested the FR, as well as having England engines, Fairlies and the ‘Ladies’, should have a grouping known as the ‘Dead Liberal Prime Minister’ class. Indeed, once WHHR trains are running properly on the FR/WHR system we could have a train hauled by Palmerston and David Lloyd George pulling the Gladstone Carr.

Gladstone himself is one of our more interesting political figures. Not because of his debates at the despatch box with his great rival Disraeli but for his dedication to seeking out fallen women to ‘rehabilitate them’, an activity he continued during his periods in Downing Street. Imagine what the tabloids would make of that today?

It’s also got me thinking about how in the 19th Century it was quite the done thing for railway companies to ingratiate themselves with political leaders by naming locomotives after them, and how attitudes have changed since the Second World War.

True, there was a Battle of Britain called ‘Winston Churchill’, and we could also count the renaming of an A4 ‘Dwight D Eisenhower’ after the Supreme Allied Commander and later US President, but I wonder whether we will ever see a modern locomotive named ‘Lady Thatcher’ or ‘Tony Blair’?

I haven’t forgotten, of course, that the wreck of Palmerston was briefly and most-unofficially renamed ‘Harold Wilson’ as a prank on the FR in the 60’s, but that doesn’t count.