Bogie Swap

Building bowsider 19 has caused Himself to have a rethink about out existing model of its sibling, 20.

This was also built from a Worsley Works kit but we opted to go our own way on the bogies.

We used the same ones that are running under our Langley pair 17 and 18, which are plastic Grandt Line 'trucks' - plastic wheels and all.

25 years ago it seemed like a better option that using the fold-up brass bogies which came with the kits, but they've always wobbled like nobody's businesses.

So for 19 Himself has decided to try and fit a set of Dundas FR 3'6" bogies, but he was concerned about whether they would have enough swing tucked up between the bowsider's frames to get around the tightest curves on Dduallt.

Well, it turns out they do, so he's decided to retro-fit them to 20 as well, which also means mounting the coupling on the bogie (as opposed to a an independent sprung fixing) and chopping away a tiny bit of the frame beneath the balcony.

Hopefully there'll be a whole lot less wobbling going on now.

One One Eight

Our latest Superbarn is passed for traffic.

(I'll be in trouble for writing that - officially we're supposed to call them Super Saloons.)

As the kids used to say, whatever!

So we now have a fleet of six of them - three of the original style and three of the later style with the big windows - to go along with the service car and the Obs 150.

I'm looking forward to being able to run all of them together as one rake when we show Bron Hebog at Bressingham in June.

It won't be long before I'll have to start work on the 7th of them because Boston Lodge are busy building number 120.

The Body Shell

It's time for the most exciting bit of a carriage build - gluing all the parts together to make a body shell.

The first task is to fix the sub-assemblies for the doors in place on each end of the main side pieces.

In the shot below you can see all the parts laid out.

And a few minutes later here they are joined together.

One of the things about gluing styrene pieces together with solvent is that they can twist and warp if you give them the opportunity so once the body parts are put together I am always anxious to make the floor piece to sit inside and stop any ideas it has about bending inwards like two back-to-back bananas.

The next job will be to drill the holes for the bogie pivot bolts and begin to think about making a roof.

Back To Work

I have managed to shake off the modelling malaise and found an hour or so to work on putting the beading onto the ends for 2047.

The truth is it wasn't so much a lack of motivation but a case of lots of other things to do which had kept me away from the workbench.

There's not much more to do on these now.

The corridor connections have already been made so it'll be very easy to glue them on.

When that's done in I won't be far away from being able to glue the 8 bits together to make up a body shell.

Pay Attention!

I'm kicking myself for falling for the oldest one in the book.

There I was merrily making bits for 2047, using our model of 2046 as a guide, without stopping to check that they are completely identical.

Talk about a beginner's error!

The difference I discovered was at the top of the doors.

Every other WHR up to and including 2046 had a solid panel, with beading, above the window.

What I hadn't clocked was that on 2047 this has been changed to a small glazed panel, the same as the FR Super Barn design.

Fortunately I noticed this while I was still working on detailing the sub-assemblies, so it was reasonable straightforward to chop the panels out and add in a bar at the top of each of the windows.

If hadn't noticed until I had glued the bits of the body shell together, or even worse finished the whole carriage, I would have been fuming.

Oh well, we live and learn, Or not, as the case may be....

Detailing Doors

It's taken me long than I would have liked to get back into a modelling routine in 2018 and very little has been done at my end of the operation in the last couple of weeks.

I did receive my new stocks of styrene strip, however, and I have made a start on detailing the end door assemblies for the WHR saloon 2047.

At the moment they're about 75% finished.

I still have to add the droplights in the windows and there is the kick boards to be put beneath as well as the footsteps.

This is just one end of the carriage, there is another pair of single doors which I haven't started on yet and the ends as well.

So there's quite a lot to be done.

I have the materials now, I just need the time and the motivation.

Very Vintage Carriage

Sometimes models imitate reality in more ways that just appearance.

Our carriage 19 is a case in point.

The real one was the last of the FR's 'bowsiders' to be restored after the preservationists' took over, taking many years to get back into traffic.

Even then it didn't take them close on the near three decades it's taken us to complete our vintage carriage fleet.

Once upon a time, when we started modelling the FR in 009 there was only a kit available for one flavour of bowsider - the first pair 17 and 18, from Langley - and it wasn't until many years later that Worsley Works came up with a set of basic body etched for the second pair.

(The four are not identical, you see. This irritating FR habit goes right back to Victorian times.)

When we were first building Dduallt the intention was to have all the locomotives and rolling stock finished in the condition they were in in 1988.

That has withered away over the years and now our stock boxes are a right mish mash.

In 1988 19 was the last bowsider left in all over red livery and for a long time intended it to be at the top end of a full set of red carriages along with 11, 105, 106, 12, and 16.

I can't remember when we bought the etches for it but what I do know is that Himself made a start on it, then obviously got distracted by something else, and it has sat for years with the basic body and frame put together but that's all.

I made an interior for it, which you can see in the picture below, and that was when I was living in my previous house which we moved out of nearly 9 years ago!

Finally, though, its time has come and he's resumed work on it, fitting Dundas FR bogies and Greenwich couplers, making up the truss rods and soldering the roof on.

There's still the question, though, of what colour to paint it.

When the Victorian bogie carriages all went through extensive restorations at the start of this century they either emerged in incredibly ornate Victorian splendour or dowdy inter-war colours.

Unfortunately for Himself, 19 emerged in a rich dark plum livery, complete with gold leaf around the panelling, just like the curly roof van.

Very sportingly he's declared that is willing to give this a go.

The fun and games of painting it are a little further down the line.

The most immediate question is how we're going to reproduce the lamp pots along the roof?