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GCR Edwardian Mainline Stock- Part I

James Harrison

Entry posted by James Harrison

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Progress with the loco has reached the lining out stage. The easiest way to line it, I reckon, is to start with some LNWR/ BR mixed traffic lining (grey with an inner red line) and then touch in the yellow outer line afterward.

 

To which end I have ordered some appropriate lining transfers. Whilst waiting for them I succumbed to itchy fingers and began another project.

 

You may remember last year when I had a few attempts at building some original 1898 GCR carriages. The conclusion I reached, after building a pair of them, was that they can't be hackbashed convincingly from ready-to-run models. But then I found that some slightly later carriages (from around 1905/ 06) are strikingly similar to old Triang Caledonian coaches.

 

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Composite brake carriage, builder's photograph.

 

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All first and all-third, scale drawings in George Dow's Great Central Railway. vol.3 (this work forms the backbone of my little reference library).

 

So comparing the carriage bodies to the photograph and drawings, suggested that I could build a model of each from the three Caley coaches I had in my project stash.
Each body only required one cut to each side to arrive at a close approximation of the GCR carriages- and even better, the beading matches up! No need to sand the bodies smooth and rebuild the beading afterward.
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The brake carriage was first under the saw. A big plus with these old Triang coaches is that once a pair of fixing screws are removed, the roof drops out and then the sides all loose. Being reduced to a set of flat parts makes it so much easier to cut them up and change them.

 

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The all-third followed. The windows on the corridor side make a pleasing match with the drawing- and even better the number of compartments matches.

 

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Finally the all-first. My comments on the all-third about the match of the windows and compartments stand true here too.

 

Right, that's the easy bit!

 

Now to cut up the underframes..... which are much chunkier pieces of kit. I cut two up and then called it a night.

 

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So one of the underframes cut down to length, then the carriage sides glued into it and left to set. The all-first has been likewise treated, leaving only the all-third still flatpacked.

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Londontram

Brilliant job at first glance I thought the pictures were of Caledonian coaches so close do they look like them, this should make a lovely rake of carriages when done. I'm looking forward to more updates on these.

                                                                         Steve

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James Harrison

Thanks!  They're not going to be 100% accurate of course- the Caley coaches are 'close enough' but obviously not based on GCR types.  But I think they'll make convincing lookalikes and an eyepleasing rake when finished. 

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Dana Ashdown

Butler Henderson needs some coaches, so I'm looking forward to how you do these!

 

Two points that came up when I tried to cut-down a Caledonian composite into a pseudo-GWR Toplight to provide some first class accommodation with the long clerestories:

 

The first is that the chassis sits too high. I overcame this by removing the bogies and grinding down the bosses until the buffers were at the right height. I used a small, hand-operated bench grinder for this which worked quite well. (I did this to most of my old Hornby "Railroad" coaches with the Mk.I bogies.)

 

The second problem then arose in that Tri-ang made the waist too high, so the bottom of the waist panel on the Caledonian side is level with the top of the waist panel of the GWR coaches. This I could not correct.

 

In the end I painted it in the 1928 GWR livery because the waist matches up with the Collett stock.

 

Maybe a GCR conversion is in order.

 

Dana

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James Harrison

The bogies I need to replace; I've ordered some Bachmann Gresley/ Thompson ones as my standard go-to replacements.  Getting the old ones out is hard work with those brass rivets!  Then the bolsters can be ground down, which will bring them in line with my Grafar OO carriages. 

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