Entry posted by JDaniels
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I was going to write something this evening but the rain has driven me out of the garden. Hopefully I have more success with railway modelling than I do with growing clematis!
The second brake coach is now almost finished and ready (just about) for painting. A photo is attached. As with the first coach, glazing and handrails will be fitted after painting.
Unfortunately it's not quite the same as the first brake as I dispensed with the ends that came with the underframe kit. The ends are, for some reason, etched in very thin brass, you could cut paper with the edge. Shire Scenes do etched ends that have the advantage of "wings" that locate against the sides making it far easier to solder and they are also more substantial. With the MT ends I had to strengthen the join with fillets of brass angle and because of the thickness of the metal the ends flex and eventually the constant mauling to get a decent fit created so many creases and folds I realised that they were only fit for scrap after so many attempts.
What I didn't appreciate until I received the Shire Scenes ends was just how different th detail is from those in the MT chassis kit. Taking the step end first, the steps are far larger than those in the MT kit. They do however have a better fixing with a tab that folds up enabling the step to be soldered against the back of the coach end. This also made it easier to solder the inside fixing bracket as it was against an almost flush surface.The Shire Scenes sides also had rivet detail and an etched lamp bracket, the latter I replaced with brass rod suitably flattened and filed to represent the flat surface as the etched ones wouldn't have lasted 5 minutes.
At the other end, the communicating cord gear, the rod across the top of the end, was represented by etched brass in the Shire Scenes kit. I replaced this with brass rod and also used from the MT kit the small fold up box that is just to the right of the centre line and from which a vertical rod goes down to underneath the buffer beam. Another difference between the kits, this box on the Shire Scenes end is to the left of the centre line. The release lever for the alarm gear was again taken from the MT kit. Again the position on the end of the coach is slightly different between the two kits, MT show this as being along the line of the moulding, Shire Scenes as above the moulding. Again I used the MT part positioned along the moulding. The alarm gong is not represented in the Shire Scenes kit and MT do not have what I think is an accurate representation of the gong which from photographs was quite elegantly shaped. I used a small washer as the MT gong is quite fiddly to make. A white metal casting would have been better.
So all in all the ends are something of a hybrid. Looked at separately no one would notice any difference between the ends of the two coaches (the steps are the most prominent difference) but if viewed end on together the size of the steps is quite noticeable. Once everything is completed I may look at replacing the smaller steps on the first coach I completed (the Shire Scenes sides do have a number of spares) but with the roof now fixed that may be impossible.
It may be that the MT and Shire Scenes ends were produced from different drawings but the differences I encountered do show that we can't assume the kit we have lovingly built is an accurate model but given the number of different designs of 4 wheel coaches this is hardly surprising. I remembered only this morning that I do have a scanned copy of an old article in Backtrack with photos of some 4 wheel coaches as colliery trains and one photo confirmed that the steps were larger than MT show, although not perhaps quite as large as Shire Scenes. I wouldn't have fancied trying to climb up either of those steps! At the other end the box on the communicating cord gear was on the right, as MT show. However it is quite likely that other designs may have been different.
Now that Mainly Trains have ceased trading I'm fortunate to have the kits at all but I really hope that someone, maybe Shire Scenes, can take over the artwork and produce a complete kit (chassis, sides and ends). The Ratio coaches came out, probably in the 1980's, when nothing similar was available and were enthusiatically received. However plastic might be fine for the sides but in common with the many wagon kits it cannot represent the fine detailing of the brake gear and other chassis features. To my mind though the most noticeable flaw is the omission of the gas piping on the roof. What part of a coach is the most viewed? There was an excellent article on the GWR modelling website by Steve Farrow that included much useful information on the layout of the piping which I used.
What would be ideal is to have the MT chassis which looks to me very accurate, Shire Scenes sides are also very accurate (although some are not true to prototype to accomodate the Ratio chassis) but new ends would defintely be needed, slightly wider so the sides fit over, rather than on, the solebars. The roof would be simple, a sheet of plasticard maybe with information as to the positioning of rainstrips, gas lights and associated piping. It wouldn't be that difficult and making such a kit where all the components were designed to fit each other would be a pleasure, not the expensive chore that frankly this has become.
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