Langley did their brass kits for 'bowsiders' 17 and 18, and Parkside Dundas had the plastic semi-opens 37 and 38. And that was about it apart from some ancient GEM and FR whitemetal kits for old Obs 11, WHR pair 23 and 26 and sundry box boxes which all weighed not far short of a real NG carriage.
So there wasn't much choice other than to scratch build, which is how we came to have this model of 16 which is entirely built from styrene. (Yes, even the curvy handrails on the balconies!)
My technique for building this carriage wasn't dissimilar to the way they these pioneering iron framed bogie carriages were built in 1872.
In those days - we're talking 18 years ago now - I was still building carriages with a fixed floor and a removable roof.
On these carriages there was a bit of a problem doing that because the bogies are tucked up into the carriage body and hidden behind those big iron frames.
What I did was to build the bottom frame and the end balconies as a rolling chassis unit and make a separate square carriage body to mount on top.
As the model is so old there are a few things I find a wee bit unsatisfactory these days - the windows should be slightly rounded, for a start. But I think its still quite a creditable effort.
This model shows 16 as it was running in 1988 in the all over Cherry Red livery, so we can't reasonably run it on Bron Hebog, so I think in time we'll replace it with a Worsley Works brass kit finished in the Col. Stephens green livery that 16 is running around with currently.
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