Design Time

Before I can begin on a model of 150 I'm going to have to create my drawing for it because apparently there is no such thing as an official one.

It rather begs the question about how they ever managed to build the real carriage, but such is the mysterious world of Blodge....

Anyway, back to my drawing.

I've made up this first draft using some measurements Himself took for me.

The difficulty I have is that I don't have any values for the overall length of the carriage.

Himself provided me with measurements for the widths of the various windows and I've used those as the basis for this plan.

What is concerning me just a little is that the carriage comes out at a smidgen longer than one of the standard Superbarns (that's a technical term, you understand) and now I need to ascertain whether that is correct or not?

One person I asked - who should certainly know - told me I'm on the right lines, but being the diligent journalist I am I would like to get that from a second source before I commit to using this drawing.

So I have tasked one of my secret agents to sneak up on the real carriage and take some more measurements for me.

I shall report back when the intelligence reaches me.

Venting Frustration

I don't think I've ever had a model before where I have left off so many bits in error.

Himself was getting on towards the final stages of painting the 'Disco Car' when he spotted something missing from the roof - the vent from the gas boiler compartment.

As it happens it's an easy part to knock up from a lump of styrene and glue it on, which is what he's done.

It wasn't as if I'd completely overlooked the vent.

It was on my mental 'to do' list but somehow got forgotten about in my excited rush to declare it 'finished' and get onto the next project.

Still, looking on the bright side, the paint job is looking good.

Don't Forget The Bogies

There I was thinking I was almost done with 117 and ready to hand it over to Himself to knock up a brass roof and solder up some of the pesky Superbarn handrails (he hates it when I make him do those) when I realised I hadn't made up the bogies yet.

These days all my new FR carriages are being built with our own design of authentic FR carriage bogies using a fold-up brass base (produced for us by Narrow Planet) and some detail castings which I turn out to glue on top.

'Top Hat' bearings are soldered into the frame to hold the Parkside Dundas wheelsets and they run like a dream.

These pictures show the bogies folded and soldered (top) and then with the castings pushed on and glued into place (below).

The final stage, which is not shown here, is to add a section of 80" styrene on top of the stretcher so they can swivel beneath the chassis properly, but equally you could to this by putting a deeper pivot on the chassis.

Screen Time

I remembered one last job I had to do on the inside of 117.

(I told you that snagging lists were never ending.)

It's the small screens that divide the saloon from the vestibules.

You can see from the picture that I knock these up from styrene and I've glued them to the inside of the body rather than have them fixed to the floor with the seats.

This was another job where I was very pleased with the new slow-bond super glue I blogged about a couple of weeks ago.

With a task like this it's good to be have half a minute or so to make fine adjustments to the positioning but also know that you will get a firm fix very soon after that.

The Bits You Don't See

My carriage roofs are multi-functional.

They're made as a styrene laminate.

Part of its purpose is to help keep the top of the bodyside straight and give the shell some strength.

Where there is a plastic skin being curved over the top then I also mount some ribs which help the top surface to keep its shape.

Lastly, I glue some strips on the underside which the hold the top edge of the glazing in place and, along with the seats and tables, keep it up tight against the inside of the windows.

That's what you can see in the picture here.

It's usually the last job I do before bonding the roof in place but not this time because, as has become our way with the Superbarns, I shall ask Himself to cut, bend and fix a brass roof to the carriage.

I'm Glad That's Done

So in the end I decided to tackle one of my least favourite jobs: the corridor connections.

Might as well get it out of the way, I reckoned.

I'm not too keen on it mainly because it's both fiddly and slightly boring at the same time.

The fiddly bit is joining the three bits of strip together the make the U section.

The boredom comes because you have to do that six times, and then after that there's a lot of filing and sanding work to round off the corners so they look at least something like bits of rubber folded over.

I'm always glad I've done it though because I think it's really essential to getting the look of  FR corridor stock right. 

It's just that I never look forward to having to do it.

Four Steps At A Time

When a carriage gets to this stage of a build you end up with what seems like an ever-lengthening list of small details to complete it.

That's the bad news.

The good news is that you can begin knocking them off in a spare 10 or 15 minutes, which happens to be all the time I've had in a single session just recently.

The latest progress is that I've fixed on the footsteps at each corner of the underframe and I've also fixed on some small bits of strip which represent the brackets underneath the bodysides.

These are a distinctive feature of the Superbarns.

There is no shortage of these small jobs, the trouble is I can never decide which one to tick off the list next.