LSWR brake coach

Entry posted by Barry Ten November 26, 2019

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At Railwells a year or two ago, I picked up two Roxey Mouldings kits for LSWR 56 foot corridor coaches. I've just acquired a beautiful Blacksmith kit for an S&DJR coach so I thought, rather than dive in with that, I would crack on with the LSWR coaches as a warm-up exercise. This has turned out to be a good idea as although they come from different manufacturers, the coaches look to be of very similar design.

I've started with the brake coach of the LSWR set, and this was the progress after a few nights. I started with the bogies, then did the sides (forming the tumblehome, then soldering on the ventilators and droplights, then forming the folded edges at the top and bottom).

The chassis is a very simple fold-up design and went together quickly, at least in its basic form. The body and chassis could be then be temporarily bolted together.

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A couple more evening's work saw additional chassis parts in the form of buffers and battery boxes etc. I then soldered in the lower door hinges (one of those "was it worth it" jobs) as well as some end details. I then cut the vacuum formed roof slightly oversize and was able to clip it into place to get a sense of how it'll look when properly tidied up:

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A nice feature of the coach is these etched internal partitions which help add rigidity and support the roof. Helpfully, there are half-etched marks on the tops of the sides to aid location.

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So far so good - everything fits pretty well, barring the odd niggle. But there are no truss rods supplied, even though the instructions say that there should be brass section supplied. I wondered if it was a packing error, but both coaches are the same. There's also not much guidance about the corridor connectors. There seem to be enough etched parts to form a working scissors arrangement but there's no mention in the instructions and nothing to form the bellows. My plan is to wimp out and use the easier MJT bellows. The instructions were also very confusing about the bogies, seeming to refer to a different, compensated design than what's supplied. Fortunately, the bogie design was straightforward. One slight extra grumble - and this applies to just every etched/cast bogie kit I've seen - why are the holes in the backs of the axlebox castings never remotely deep or wide enough to fit over the brass bearings that need to be soldered into the main frames? Every one of these castings needed the holes opening out, a difficult, fiddly job with a small, vulnerable casting.

Anyway, I would have to say that these are rather nice kits other than the lack of the truss rodding (or chairs) but building a prototypical rake of four (they tended to run in set formations) will be quite time-consuming. I think I'll finish the first two and see how I feel!

Cheers!