Titivate Dapol / Hornby 12 wheel 68 ft Restaurant Cars & build a D1844 12 wheel Sleeper Composite from spares

[plasticbasher]

Hi All,

 

While the (glacial) progress on my Triang / Hornby / Ratio Midland 3F build has not juddered to a halt (I am actually doing two simultaneously now!), I felt like doing something a little different.

 

A little while ago I bought a job lot of coach bits to fix up some broken coaches of my own.  After fixing a couple of broken coaches, amongst the pile of new bits I'd acquired was:

• A Hornby (or Dapol) 68 foot, 12 wheel dining car chassis, with a broken buffer.
• An Airfix Stanier 57 foot corridor brake bodyshell repainted in primer on one side and gloss maroon the other, with a matching interior and roof .
• There was also a spare Airfix 60 foot composite coach roof.

 

I already had a similar Airfix LMS Stanier brake body / interior / roof assembly stripped of paint.  What really kicked this little project off was noticing a pair of Hornby 12 wheel Restaurant Car bogies on eBay (I think they were about a tenner with postage).  I then ordered a pair of Comet M24 etched coach sides for a Sleeper Composite from Wizard Models (again about £10 - although I ordered some other bits from Wizard at the same time).

 

So I shall use all of the above to create an LMS D1844 12 wheel Sleeper Composite coach.

 

I also have two of the Hornby / Dapol 68 foot 12 wheel Restaurant Cars and have found some very useful threads on here covering improvements to these coaches.  Inspired by these threads the principle improvements I plan on making are:

• Fit metal wheels (Hornby 14mm coach wheels)
• Fill in the cut-outs in the solebars.
• Lower the coaches by 1mm
• Lower the interior so the tables line up with the base of the windows - since seeing a post highlighting how the interior is way too high in these coaches, I can't unsee that flaw...

 

The sleeper will also be lowered and have the cut-outs in the solebars filled in.

 

Here are some useful links:

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?%2Ftopic%2F98352-Hornby-12-wheel-lms-ex-restaurant-car-mods%2F

 

 

 

Here are a  few photo's to show:

 

• The pile of bits I'm using to make up a Sleeper Composite
• The excess height of the Hornby / Dapol Restaurant Car chassis when buffer to buffer with Hornby's latest Maunsell coach (slightly damaged but sitting at the correct height).  The Restaurant car is about 1mm too high and this is noticeable. 
• The solebar cut-outs that need filling in (the Restaurant car on the right has the optional Dapol chassis without cutouts - the bare chassis on the left is the Dapol version with cutouts that is (sadly) the only version Hornby manufacture.

 

 

Edited November 30, 2020 by plasticbasher
Correct typos & add some links

[plasticbasher]

Progress update:

 

1. I have been swapping the plastic wheels out for metal Hornby 14mm coach wheels and replacing the bogie securing pins with machine screws and nuts (you can see that in the photo's attached to the first post).  The machine screws are trimmed to length obviously.  Another thread on these coaches mentioned filing down the screw head to allow clearance for the middle axle in each bogie.  I can confirm that is time consuming but very necessary.

 

2. To create the bodyshell for the 68 ft Sleeper Composite I took the two Airfix Stanier Brake coaches and:

• Chopped the brake compartment off one just by the double doors in both sides (so it now measures 155mm long).
• The other one also had the brake compartment removed but more of it (so the part that was left measured 117mm).  The second photo showed the faint pencil line where I initially cut (by a door, but it left a passenger section that was about 1.5mm too long).

 

I used the passenger compartments and not the brake compartments as I didn't want the extra hassle of filling end windows and chiseling off the guard's duckets.

 

Using a small flat file, a set square and some fine sand paper I tidied up both sides and adjusted until they created a square coach shell exactly the same length as the etched sides.

 

Edited November 29, 2020 by plasticbasher
Missing info

[plasticbasher]

Final installment for now.

 

The Plan:

• The assembly of the Airfix Staniers is different to that of the Dapol / Hornby 12 wheel Restaurant cars, despite the design work for the 12 wheelers being started by Airfix (the coach was slated for their 1981 range I believe).  That release never happened as Airfix were taken over by Mainline and in the end the 12 wheelers were completed and released by Dapol in the late 1980's...before the moulds were then sold to Hornby in the 1990s.
• Anyway, the Airfix Staniers have a separate roof and the bodyshell has an integral floor; whereas the Dapol / Hornby 12 wheelers have the roof moulded with the bodyshell and no floor.
• I decided (for strength) that I would splice the two half coach bodyshells together and then glue a roof on (with a 2 cm bit chopped off one end) and add a section of another roof to complete the coach shell.
• When the glue (Revell Contacta and EMA PlasticWeld) has set rock hard I'll remove what's left  of the coach floors, so I can fit the "new" bodyshell to the Hornby / Dapol 12 wheeler chassis.

So where am I at?

• The coach bodies have been glued together.
• All raised detail (door hinges, handrails, door handles etc) on the sides removed and smoothed flush.
• One end has had the top part of the curved water pipes removed (I wish I'd done both ends now).
• One Airfix roof has a section removed from one end and was glued to the bodyshell (ensuring everything stayed square).  The other roof had an appropriate section cut from one end and glued in place.

Main things still to do:

• Remove floors from bodyshell when glue is hard.  Make body fit 12 wheel chassis.
• Sort chassis - lower 1mm, fill solebar cutouts, remove gas cylinders (not present on a Sleeper) and so on.
• Remove ribs from roof (to be confirmed - I am pretty sure the 68ft vehicles didn't have them but need to check)
• Mark sides where I need to remove bits for windows; remove those bits and glue sides on.
• Hack existing Airfix interiors (it's a sleeping coach, so you can see much)
• Paint, glaze and whatnot.

 

Should be about 2025 when this one is finished then!!

Edited November 29, 2020 by plasticbasher
Typo

[plasticbasher]

And a photo with sides trial fitted and the roof sections glued in place brings it bang up to date.

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

Interesting projects.

I cheated when buying my restaurant cars by buying ones with the full solebars, one less job to do!

 

Mike.