Rearranging the deck chairs - well carriage seats

[Nick Lawson]

A cheap and cheerful hack to the Ratio  carriage seating kit.

 

I've been building an old Slaters D516 6 wheel Composite coach. Lacey & Dow vol 1, p113 shows the interiors of both 1st & 3rd class compartments from one of these coaches. (Essery & Jenkinson's “Midland Carriages, an illustrated review” p118 has a better reproduction of the 1st class interior btw.)

 

The illustrations show the significant difference between the first and third class seating, particularly the height of the seat backs, visible through the windows. The third class seat backs come roughly 1/3 of the way up the windows; while the swanky firsts come almost 2/3 of the way up and have wings.

 

The Slaters' kit included 2-part carriage seats but all of one type,  suitable for the 3rd class compartments, but a grave disappointment to any first class passenger. Taking the 3rd class first:

 

The supplied seats  are slightly too tall, coming half way up the window. Also the top of the main section of the back should be roughly level with the bottom of the window. This latter can be rectified by removing a mil or so off the foot of the seating, preferably before assembling it. This of course means that the seat itself is a bit on the low side, but that will be less visible than the back when you peer through the window.

 

Having lowered the whole thing so that the main section of seat back aligns, reduce the top of the seat back slightly so that it is approximately the required overall height. I've done nothing with the compartment wall above the seat back.  (Wot, no hat rack?)

 

As indicated, the first class seating should be visibly more opulent; in fact not only having much higher backs but, thanks to the larger compartment size, allowing the passenger to lounge back, unlike the hoi polloi in the smaller, sit-up-and-beg 3rds. So on to phase two:

 

I had previously acquired some of the much larger Ratio carriage seat strips. A quick comparison showed that these were much too tall, reaching to the top of the carriage windows, rather than nearly 2/3 of the window height. Removing the headrest section from the seat would bring it down to about the right height - although the convex curvature of the seat back would be completely wrong for a passenger wanting to lean back and fumigate the compartment with one of his largest cigars. Cut and shut time:

 

By sawing horizontally through the back just above seat level, cleaning the seat flush, spinning the back over so it was back to front & upside down, and reattaching the back to the rear of the seat, not the top; one gets a slightly deeper seat (front to back) and a seat-back with a suggestion of lumbar support and a reclining curve that can be set to any angle you like. So a better shape, but still not right.

 

Take 2: repeat the above, but having sawn off the back, warm it up (carefully!) with a hairdryer or other heatsource & flatten the curve out slightly before reattaching to the seat. This now gives an approximation of the first class seating, but sans armrests and wings. (Oh all right, the "careful" heating was Take 3!). The first pic below shows a before and after.

 

The armrests were cut from bellwire superglued into the seat back. They are too round and not wide enough, but will have to do. The wings were cut and filed out from scrap plastic and glued in. They are still a bit big and make me think of Mickey Mouse. Having reversed the seat back I then cut away most of the old headrest from underneath the seat so I can hide some ballast weight there.

 

The second pic below, further exaggerated by perspective and pale primer gives an idea of the possible effect from the different seating.