About a year ago, I was able to buy a Triang Caledonian composite off of Ebay for a few pounds. It had been painted brown and lettered LNER and it looked vaguely North Eastern, which was what originally picqued my interest.

When it arrived I thought that the sides looked well enough but was disappointed to find it was fitted with BR Mk.1 ends, roof and undercarriage, so it went onto a shelf whilst I had a think what to do.

Whilst idly flipping through my copy of George Dow's Great Central trilogy for ideas of rolling stock to build, in Volume 2 I found a few line drawings of 1898 Parker stock which looked as though they could be bashed from the Triang Caley coaches. A little more research produced 4mm scale drawings in copies of Railway Modeller from the late 1970s/ early 1980s.

This being a first attempt I decided not to go for anything overly ambitious- the carriage as bought most closely resembles a Compartment First, so that is what I decided to model.

I didn't note down any measurements or take photos of where to cut up each side to get the right number and arrangement of compartments, or windows on the corridor side!- as there are any number of ways these sides can be cut up and reassembled I think anyone following my example would most likely prefer to make their own decision on where to place cuts.

After a few evenings' work I had two sides...

On the reverse I had to use some plastic sheet as a sort of spine to give strength to the sides.

I had to then carefully file out the windows to get them to the right size, using the moulded beading as a guide, and once this was done I removed the beading entirely with a file and sandpaper. I need to replace it with new beading from plastic strip.

I cut a section out of the middle of the underframe (before I did this I removed and discarded the trussing) and then used more plastic sheet to reinforce the new joint.

And I have removed all of the detail from the ends of the carriage and reprofiled the roof line to produce the distinctive flat down the middle of the roof.