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.