Happy Endings

In my naivety I used to think that making another 11 and 12 set would be a 'quick fill-in project' whereas in fact they're requiring as much time and effort as any other FR or WHR carriage.

Putting the beading detail on the two ends of 11, for instance, has taken up a couple of evenings in the last week.

At the observation end the challenge is to make sure everything is symmetrical and that the vertical bars in the middle are indeed truly central.

On the brake end it is the two narrow windows on either side which have had time lavished on them, in particular the rounded corners at the top.

As I have described in more detail in the carriage building How To section on the blog the technique I was taught is to glue small triangles into the corners and then attack them with a round needle file.

On these old FR brake vans I've had to go through the process three times.

Once when fabricating the basic outline piece.  Then again when the second beading layer is added on top.

Finally the window droplight, which I bond on behind, also has rounded corners at the top  - damnit.

As I don't have any decent pictures showing the top of these droplights I did, at the eleventh hour, contact one of my FR sources in the vain hope that they would come back and tell me that all four corners of the droplights are square - like on any normal carriage! - but alas they didn't.

Hey ho, out with the file again!