Boogie Nights

We all have our reasons for becoming modellers and one of them, I suspect, is seeking to recapture our lost youth.

I'm pretty sure that is the motivation behind the latest 'outside contract' I've taken on to scratch build a model of the FR tin car 121, not as a workaday tourist carriage but it's alter-ego 'the Disco Car'.

This, by all accounts, was a very riotous form of staff / volunteer social event where the carriage would be stripped of its seats and a rudimentary sound and light system set up at one end and the train would chuff off to Dduallt, or somewhere else safely out of earshot, for a sort of railway rave-up.

I was far too young to ever be involved in this sort of debauchery so I'm relying on what I'm told by other people whose memories may have become corrupted over the years.

Apparetly once they'd arrived at Dduallt the DJ would take requests through one of the windows - and a rather dodgy character he looked too!

The client has issued very specific instructions.

They would like the carriage supplied as near as possible to the condition it appeared on these specials, even down to the sliding bus-type windows to be in their fully-open state.

(Apparently it used to get quite hot and sweaty in there!)

By this time the carriage was onto its fourth and final livery.

Although 121 was the last of the original series of 'tin cars' (if we exclude 111) it was the first to be withdrawn.

Its body was cut up although one of the distinctive end vestibules was saved and auctioned on ebay as a unique collectors piece, rather in the style of the diesel locomotive cabs that were bought occasionally.

The frame was re-used to carry the body of the first 'service car' 124 and today one of the so-called 'super barns' carries the number 121.

It should be an interesting project I'll be getting onto it as soon as I've got the next Oberon Wood house finished.