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Modifying Ratio Clayton Clerestory coaches


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Like others before me I'm having a go at this. I have Stephen Williams' “4mm coach” vol 1 which devotes a chapter to mods on this type of coach. This post is partly a commentary on that.

 

In the section on the underframe, SW cuts away the plastic truss rods and replaces them with brass wire. He says he considered similarly replacing the plastic running board supports but decided against it, perhaps partly because his aim was to demonstrate a technique and had already done so. Perhaps also to leave scope for keen types to go one better?!

 

The downsides of leaving the running board assembly are: firstly that it makes life more difficult to have to carefully pare away the truss rods from the running board – rather than just clearing away the whole lot; and secondly that the end result is to make the running board stanchions look even more massive than before, in comparison to the new, slimmer truss rods. I "went for it", and replaced the running board stanchions with steel wire – mostly salvaged from unwanted alex jackson couplings hanging off an ebay purchase.

 

The problems with doing this are that firstly the prototype stanchions appear to have tapered downwards, which I did not try to replicate; and secondly that the plastic footboards now look even more butch. I thinned down the latter. Another time I might try to fake up replacements from brass offcuts as SW suggests.

 

I hadn't originally intended to replace the supplied plastic brake and gas cylinders, but when I got to them found they are really manky; so replacements were sourced from Wizard. I should have gone for whitemetal V-hangers rather than the brass ones I acquired. I fitted these and temporarily wired the brake cylinder lever between them to find the cylinder height to match. The whitemetal brake cylinder ends were distinctly oval, which won't show, but too tall for my requirement (I probably bought the wrong part) so I sawed about a mil off the top. Because I hadn't intended to fit these replacements I had glued the solebars on to the floor before finding I needed to cut off the plastic mounting for the original cylinder, which again made life difficult.

 

The whitemetal gas tanks are plain. I managed to superglue some plastic strip around them to represent the supporting bands. I was so busy trying to ensure that I didn't superglue my fingers to each other and everything else that I annoyingly didn't end up with the ends of the plastic in line with the casting defect on one tank, such that these could all be hidden away.

 

Also I made these tanks up before realising that “Historic Carriage Drawings vol 2” (David Jenkinson) P97 nicely illustrates the asymmetric positioning of these tank bands and also a more rounded end to the tank than the supplied casting, which perhaps could have been fettled to match.

 

SW's narrative includes phrases on the lines of “I knocked this up from bits in my scrap box” which is annoying to a newbie who hasn't got such a thing. I think I must count as a "noob" no longer as I now have a modest scrap box and did in fact find a couple of spare brass brake-shoe hangers which I cut down and soldered to some wire to make the brake pulls. It was trial and error to get this assembly to clear the underframe and I might have made a neater job of trimming off the excess afterwards.

 

The replacement bogies are a story for another day.

 

Clerestory framing.

 

Switching from low to high: Stephen Williams notes that the Ratio clerestory sides are completely featureless but decided against improving them. However, David Jenkinson (ref above) helpfully shows the framing of the clerestory sides for the three diagrams modelled by Ratio, together with the D508 Brake Composite.

 

I had a pack of assorted plasticard strip and used a length of the finest strip (no idea what size this is) to make the verticals of the framing. The result is a bit too prominent ,partly as I went in a bit heavy-handed with the spray can, but hopefully no worse than the legendary framing on the body sides! (Apologies couldn't get a decent picture).

 

For anyone who fancies a go at this - note that Jenkinson's drawings are reproduced slightly smaller than 4mm scale - at least in the edition I have (pendragon 1998)  - so you need to adjust to suit.

 

P7173297.JPG

P7173306.JPG

Edited by Nick Lawson
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Edit: Doh! Just dawned on me that you were the OP of the topic mentioned below! Apologies!

 

What is the date at which you are modelling these carriages? That affects a number of features. See this topic from earlier this year:

 

It's very rarely visible in photos but at least originally the clerestory sides had windows...

Edited by Compound2632
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@Compound2632  ( Yes, me again :) )

 

My period is 1923, so I guess the windows had gone by then? On the other hand, I don't know whether at this period I could follow Stephen Williams p46 ( a post grouping photo after the removal of gaslighting) and model the clerestory with louvres adjacent to the ventilators? And if I could do so, the best way of representing it?

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16 minutes ago, Nick Lawson said:

My period is 1923, so I guess the windows had gone by then? On the other hand, I don't know whether at this period I could follow Stephen Williams p46 ( a post grouping photo after the removal of gaslighting) and model the clerestory with louvres adjacent to the ventilators? And if I could do so, the best way of representing it?

 

Looking at the two prototype photos in Williams, especially the brake composite on p. 38, I think it is clear that the glazing is still there but the centre pane has been replaced by a panel with two sets of louvres - from other photos I think this must be a steel pressing. I suppose this was done at the same time as the door toplights were replaced with ventilators, per the Ratio kit. See also the photo on p. 46 of Williams, though this is an early Bain 54 ft corridor carriage. As the drawing Williams reproduces shows, the windows were in threes for each compartment, centred on the door, with single windows in line with the lavatories. This is well-illustrated in Drg. 1173 for the 6-whell lavatory third, MRSC 88-D0059. The clerestory was double-skinned, with inner and outer windows. The only drawing I have seen showing this well is Drg. 1128 for the 6=wheel brake, MRSC 88-D0199. Beware that the 1'10" dimension is the width of the inner window not the width of the outer window between the beading. the pitch of the windows (from centre of beading to centre of beading) was 2'1". 

 

So the windows are there in late MR / early LMS days and, I should think, to the end of the carriages' lives. No doubt they got very dirty as the clerestory side wouldn't get washed as often as the carriage side.

 

Sorry, it was the underframe you were asking about, wasn't it?

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BTW the outer clerestory windows were flush with the panelling, which helps to camouflage them in photos, so I think the best bet would be to represent them in paint rather than with glazing. I'm fairly sure the beading of the clerestory sides wasn't lined out by late Midland / early LMS days but couldn't say whether the sides were still painted red.

 

These windows are much more obvious on the later Bain round-cornered panelled carriages. 

 

The point of the clerestory roof was to admit more light...

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Stephen,

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

BTW the outer clerestory windows were flush with the panelling,

Really? Looking at e.g. Lacey & Dow fig 162, (earlier than my period)  the clerestory panels look to be recessed. And are they glass or a solid replacement?! Whereas the Pullman sleeper in fig 184 has more obviously flush windows.

4 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

... the photo on p. 46 of Williams, though this is an early Bain 54 ft corridor carriage.

Ah! That's useful to know! I note btw that on that carriage, minus gaslamp tops, it is the torpedo vents that line up with the doors, c.f. the other style where the gaslamp tops align with the doors with torpedoes offset to one side.

 

4 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I suppose this was done at the same time as the door toplights were replaced with ventilators, per the Ratio kit.

So, if I have removed the door ventilators, (seemed like a good idea at the time) should I also steer clear of the clerestory grilles?

 

I like your suggestion of indicating stuff with paint, as that means I can defer a decision! Otherwise I'm never going to get anything into service. Thanks also for the interesting links

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  • Nick Lawson changed the title to Modifying Ratio Clayton Clerestory coaches

I started a thread while thinking about underframes, then slipped in a diversion to clerestory sides. I've given the thread a more general name before moving on to:

 

roof rain strips. Following Stephen Williams I made rain strips for the lower roof from  plastic strip. The Ratio moulding in fact had a ghost of a rain strip which I used as a guide. The end result looked like SW's, but not like the prototype photographs. The rain strip should not curve down at the ends as much shown. I managed to get the strip ends away from the roof again and straightened them up a bit, although they should be slightly higher still.  Memo to self: remember this when you get to the next coach.

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2 hours ago, Nick Lawson said:

Really? Looking at e.g. Lacey & Dow fig 162, (earlier than my period)  the clerestory panels look to be recessed. And are they glass or a solid replacement?! Whereas the Pullman sleeper in fig 184 has more obviously flush windows.

 

OK some terminology: by "panelling" I mean the main flat pieces that make up the sides; by "beading" I mean the raised strips that cover the panel joints. Looking at fig. 162, the clerestory beading is black lined out gold (or possibly yellow) just as it is on the carriage side. The panels all look the same and one might interpret them as being red (as on the carriage side - just slightly less dense than the black beading), remembering that the photographic emulsion of the day was insensitive to red - but one will see a variation in density (darkness) depending on how reflective the surface is. A highly finished, varnished surface will appear darker than a matt surface (such as the carriage footboards in the same photo. So a highly reflective pane of glass will be indistinguishable from a red or black painted panel! Possibly the most convincing photo is fig. 171 which shows some literally lack-lustre 6-wheelers in 1934; because the clerestory sides are grimy and matt, the glass panes are more prominent. 

 

Because the photos are taken with a camera at roughly 4 ft off the ground (or platform) the viewpoint is always too low down to see the light through from the clerestory windows on the other side. 

 

The Pullman sleepers, like the arc-roof clerestory diners of 1892-6, had a bit of beading round the glass.

 

2 hours ago, Nick Lawson said:

Ah! That's useful to know! I note btw that on that carriage, minus gaslamp tops, it is the torpedo vents that line up with the doors, c.f. the other style where the gaslamp tops align with the doors with torpedoes offset to one side.

 

That Bain 54 ft carriage has been converted to electric lighting. 

 

3 hours ago, Nick Lawson said:

So, if I have removed the door ventilators, (seemed like a good idea at the time) should I also steer clear of the clerestory grilles?

 

From the limited sample of good photos, it seems the two go together. In late Midland / early LMS days there seems to have been something like a half-and-half mix of door toplights and door ventilators, with carriages of the same diagram but modified and unmodified seen side by side.

 

I'm very grateful for this discussion as, once again, it's forcing me to look more closely!

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15 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

From the limited sample of good photos, it seems the two go together. In late Midland / early LMS days there seems to have been something like a half-and-half mix of door toplights and door ventilators, with carriages of the same diagram but modified and unmodified seen side by side.

 

I'm very grateful for this discussion as, once again, it's forcing me to look more closely!

 

Thanks for the info on panelling/beading and analysing old photographs

 

Are there any photos from late Midland days of Clayton clerestories modified with door ventilators? People seem to hedge about this and stick safely with the knowledge that some appeared like this in LMS days. Personally it seems reasonable that as Bain stock was built with them that the Midland might well have converted earlier stock, but I don't think I've seen the photographic evidence (although as you've noticed I can't tell the difference between Bain & Clayton stock in some of these pictures). Not having to bore out all the door ventilators on an entire rake would be a definite win.
 

On the subject of this conversion, I spotted item  "10415 - C &W index of changes to stock" in the Midland Study Centre's online search tool. I asked Dave Harris about digitising this in the hope that the start date of  this door modification might appear. He did  the index but said there was too much material to do the rest. I haven't had time / opportunity to pursue this further.

 

I'm very grateful for this discussion as I'm learning a lot!

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6 hours ago, Nick Lawson said:

 

Thanks for the info on panelling/beading and analysing old photographs

 

Are there any photos from late Midland days of Clayton clerestories modified with door ventilators? People seem to hedge about this and stick safely with the knowledge that some appeared like this in LMS days. Personally it seems reasonable that as Bain stock was built with them that the Midland might well have converted earlier stock, but I don't think I've seen the photographic evidence (although as you've noticed I can't tell the difference between Bain & Clayton stock in some of these pictures). Not having to bore out all the door ventilators on an entire rake would be a definite win.

 

Plenty of train photos in which the carriages can be identified. I've been having an occasional discussion with Ian Howard (former editor of the Midland Railway Society Journal) about this and we think ventilators may even have started to replace door toplights  shortly before the Great War; however we're confident that from c. 1919 onwards one would see a mix of modified and non-modified carriages. 

 

Have a poke around the Warwickshire Railways website especially looking for W.L. Good photos whoch are dated and are mostly from 1919-mid 20s, e.g. this one at Kings Norton in June 1921: https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/lms/mrknpreg275.htm:

 

D499 brake third - toplights

D508 brake composite - ventilators

D509 composite - toplights

D508 brake composite - ventilators

 

6 hours ago, Nick Lawson said:

On the subject of this conversion, I spotted item  "10415 - C &W index of changes to stock" in the Midland Study Centre's online search tool. I asked Dave Harris about digitising this in the hope that the start date of  this door modification might appear. He did  the index but said there was too much material to do the rest. I haven't had time / opportunity to pursue this further.

 

I'm visiting as often as I can now - about once a month but probably not again until September. I'll make a note to look that up and assess its contents. It looks like one of those documents that could be a mine of information but the headroom in the seams is offputtingly low!

 

6 hours ago, Nick Lawson said:

I'm very grateful for this discussion as I'm learning a lot!

 

Me too!

Edited by Compound2632
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Me too!

 

I found a few Midland late survivors in the Longworth book. I'll post the details later when I get it out again.

 

Keep an eye on any Amazon offers as I got both volumes for £17 each with those Amazon £10 off vouchers they send you occasionally.

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/British-Railways-Pre-Nationalisation-Coaching-Stock/dp/0860936953/ref=sr_1_5?crid=3M6VM5VKVZ2NV&dchild=1&keywords=lms+coaches&qid=1626708756&rnid=1642204031&s=books&sprefix=lms+coaches%2Caps%2C163&sr=1-5

 

Maybe not as relevant to those modelling early days, but shows that there were a few that managed to survive until at least 1948.

 

Virtually a list of all coaches and NPCCS at Nationalisation with things like dates and a basic diagram.

 

 

Jason

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16 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

I found a few Midland late survivors in the Longworth book. I'll post the details later when I get it out again.

 

Interesting. Lacy & Dow give full listings for Bain stock and later in the appendices in Vil. 2, with withdrawal dates where known - which seems to be anything that made it to the 1933 renumbering - but not for the Clayton clerestories.

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45 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

I'll dig them out later.

 

Before you dig enthusiastically, remember it's the Clayton 48 ft non-corridor lavatory clerestories (built 1897-1902) we're looking at here, not the later Bain 54 ft vehicles. 

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That narrows it right down. Only a handful I'm afraid. One of which Ratio doesn't make but might be doable from a cut and shut.

 

 

D486 TL     M18726      -/00 - 7/48   2040

 

D509  CL   M19714     -/01  - 12/48  3603

 

D500 BT    M23056M  -/01  - 5/55   1140 no lavatory 5 compartment

 

Last number is the MR one.

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According to Lacy & Dow, the TL is from lot 464 and the CL from lot 526. The D500 BT (for which I think Branchlines does etched sides) is from lot 518. Was its survival due to departmental service, despite the lack of a DM number?

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15 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Plenty of train photos in which the carriages can be identified. I've been having an occasional discussion with Ian Howard (former editor of the Midland Railway Society Journal) about this and we think ventilators may even have started to replace door toplights  shortly before the Great War; however we're confident that from c. 1919 onwards one would see a mix of modified and non-modified carriages. 

 

Have a poke around the Warwickshire Railways website especially looking for W.L. Good photos whoch are dated and are mostly from 1919-mid 20s, e.g. this one at Kings Norton in June 1921: https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/lms/mrknpreg275.htm:

 

D499 brake third - toplights

D508 brake composite - ventilators

D509 composite - toplights

D508 brake composite - ventilators

Excellent - just what I needed!

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16 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

According to Lacy & Dow, the TL is from lot 464 and the CL from lot 526. The D500 BT (for which I think Branchlines does etched sides) is from lot 518. Was its survival due to departmental service, despite the lack of a DM number?

 

They are in the normal traffic section. I haven't looked in the dozen or so pages of Departmental and Internal User stock yet. There might be more in that.

 

These books are like a phone book. It was mentioned by a few people when they came out why they had two railway companies in them. The SR book would have been pretty small compared to the others.

 

For those that are obsessed with lists of numbers they are fantastic.

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  • 1 month later...

Sometime later...

 

Commode and door handles

 

One of the improvements to these coaches illustrated by Stephen Williams [“The 4mm coach – Part one”] is to cut away the mouldings for the L-shaped commode handles and replace them with brass. I had a go at this, using 0.3mm wire. The prototype handles had a very square corner, which is not really replicable in bent wire. They were also fixed at three points. I toyed for a while with bending up larger gauge wire which I could file down to achieve a squarer corner and to which I could solder a third leg; but then the other side of my brain threw its teddy out of the pram and I settled for bent brass with two legs, for a quiet life. However, in order to get the handles to sit parallel with the coach side, when cutting away the moulded plastic plastic, I left a small, half-height “plinth” at the angle to glue the unsupported corner against.

I have a Bill Bedford handrail bending jig (available from Eileen's Emporium). This is of course for straight handrails, so I used it to make a straight handrail of the overall required length and then laid this sideways on the jig to bend it in half in the other plane. It took me three goes to find the right overall length. A number of my attempts to bend a handle in half (without one end secured as for the intended use of the jig) were off target so I just started again each time. I'm sure I've seen somebody does a jig for right-angled bend handrails, but don't remember where.

The jig did at least make it relatively easy to get a set of handrails that look reasonably similar and reasonably square. The main thing with fitting these to the coach beading is that it is really obvious if the relevant parts of the handrail aren't parallel with the beading. I drilled the hole for the top fixing first, inserted the long end of the wire into this and then marked and drilled the hole for the other end. Some of my marking up was obviously defective and some remedial broaching was called for. Looking back I didn't do enough of this on some of my earlier handles and it shows.

Part way through this job I added a refinement: as a last adjustment before glueing a handle in place I flattened the front surface of the handle with rough emery and then polished with fine. I think this two minute step makes the commode handles look a bit less like wire; and it is much easier to do it before fixing. Again I see I have done this better in some cases than others, so this may be something where it is better to fettle up a matching set together, rather than making and fitting them individually.

I started off by putting superglue on the front, but changed to just blobbing glue around the legs of the handle on the inside of the coach; because in some cases with sloppy holes the handle had stuck fast before I could position it accurately. Also this made less mess and seems to have worked adequately.

Afterwards I filled holes around the handles with tippex (a wheeze I picked up elsewhere in this forum).

 

Apart from the commode handles, there are also the T door handles. I replaced the moulding with Markits brass handles. Compared to the foregoing saga, these were quick and easy to do. I drilled holes for the handles and with minimal gentle broaching had a push fit.

 

Altogether I'm quite pleased with the overall result which meets the 2 foot rule, certainly when I take my glasses off.

 

handles.JPG

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No, they have to be scraped off after painting. I hummed and hawed about whether to paint first and fix later, but tried it this way first. The picture is post-priming, so I've already scraped once. It wasn't that onerous.

 

Edited by Nick Lawson
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Replacement bogies.

 

The Ratio kits include plastic bogies which are notoriously flimsy. Perhaps less well known is that they have a slightly undersized wheelbase (about 0.5mm) and when assembled the coaches ride too high. I have looked at alternatives. If I tell y'all what I've tried, hopefully someone will tell me what I should have done!

 

Firstly, in “Another Place” last year, Bill Bedford raised the tantalising possibility of 3D-printed replacements. https://www.scalefour.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=6795&sid=874626701c068edcd1f3c06f4175ae6f&start=25#p72927 Sadly these have not appeared yet, but I live in hope.

 

In the meantime:

 

Various former products aren't available either. Dave Bradwell has stopped doing his MR bogies. 247 Developments are currently out of stock and waiting on a change of supplier.

 

Cunning Plan 1: Eileen's Emporium do Bill Bedford's old range of sprung etched bogie chassis. I've used a few sprung W irons from this range and quite like them, so I tried the 10' wheelbase kit. This is extremely delicate to start with and would require filing down even finer at the bottom to hide behind the tapering Clayton axleboxes, for which they were evidently never intended. (Picture 1). I've put these to one side for now, pending a “Cunning Plan 1A” occurring to me.

 

Cunning Plan 2. I bought some Brassmasters 10' CCU units. These bogies are pivoted transversely so that each side can pitch independently of the other. The pivots are brass pins with a rather rounded underside to the head, so seemed to be a bit of a sloppy fit. I soldered washers to the underside of the pinheads to get a flatter, firmer stomach  fit. I then trimmed the back of the Ratio plastic bogie sides and glued these to the chassis; which is when I discovered the discrepancy on the wheelbase of the former (see above). A bit of unscheduled sideways gouging was required to open up the plastic axle end holes to match the brass chassis. The offset of wheels from centre of cosmetic axleboxes isn't too noticeable provided you don't look.

 

The pivotting is controlled by wires soldered across the otherwise open ends, meaning that cosmetically the bogie ends are a bit lacking. For a coach in the middle of a fixed rake this wouldn't matter. As I'm building a brake/3rd to go at the end of a rake, I tried taking the plastic Ratio bogie end and pinning it unglued to one end of the bogie with brass wire such that the bogie can still flex as intended. This was a bit of a faff to file back the brass sides to fit this end piece and I'm not sure how long it will stay in place anyway. I didn't feel inspired to do the same to other end of the bogie. (Picture 2)

 

The brass chassis does include fold-up brake shoes. I only broke one off! (reattached) but the nature of the compensation means it would be very difficult to fit any further brake gear.

 

Fitting the brass bogie mount to the underside of the coach floor was when I discovered that the coach rides too high to match normal buffer height. Having prised the brass mounting plate back out of the Araldite, I adjusted the height. In fact to get the correct buffer height the coach has to sit very low on the bogie so that there is minimal clearance between solebar and bogie. I sat the coach on what I think is the tightest curve it will have to negotiate and thankfully I think this is ok in my case. With hindsight I realise I missed a trick, in that I could have slotted some lead inside the u section bogie mountings before glueing. Maybe next time.

 

Cunning Plan 3. I bought a set of MJT 10' CCUs from Dart Castings. These are also longitudinally split bogies, but in this case the transverse pivots are replaced by a torsion rod. This means that control wires are not needed at the ends which therefore can have an end frame, (but in two halves). I may well relegate the Brassmasters bogies to a coach in the middle of the rake and use MJTs on the end coaches. The MJT bogies don't include any brake gear at all. Dart also supply whitemetal caliper brake block castings, but frankly the alternatives supplied by Wizard looked nicer, so I got some of those instead. I haven't actually built these MJT bogies yet, as they were overtaken by:

 

Cunning Plan 4. By my time period, a percentage  of Clayton clerestories had had their original 10' bogies replaced by 8' bogies. The Comet range, supplied by Wizard, includes MR 8' bogies with cosmetic whitemetal sides and an optional springing kit. The brass chassis is rigid and the only flexibility is at the bogie pivot. The optional springing is in fact a damping mechanism to limit sideways rolling while still allowing the bogie to pitch longitudinally. (in the third pic below, the pair of arch-topped verticals are riding on these springs).

 

The cosmetic bogie sides are evidently the last remaining piece of an earlier whitemetal kit. You have to saw an awful lot of metal off the back to match the brass chassis; and even then it's very thick in some places – but not very robust in others. Like the Ratio sides, these whitemetal ones are less than the nominal wheelbase, so more gouging was required - more difficult with whitemetal, particularly as I had previously burnt-out my minidrill on a bit of diy.

 

I built one of this pair, just in time to read elsewhere in this forum @Daddyman said "I wouldn't recommend using any system that consists in putting a thick W/M frame on to an etched innards as the bogies will end up too wide, which will play havoc with your footboard supports, if you're fitting any. I found that out the hard way..."

 

I haven't fitted any footboards yet. Compared with my Brassmasters/Ratio bogies, the Comet one is perhaps 1mm wider in places, (accentuated by the shorter length) although the widths over the axleboxes themselves are more comparable.

 

As the Comet bogies are rigid you can at least add brakegear to the shoes which are provided. I had half a set of yokes left over from something else, so I faked them into the ends, but leaving the inner brakes with a plain wire crossbar.

 

Anyway that's the story so far.

bedford1.JPG

clayton.JPG

comet.JPG

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  • 2 weeks later...

Bogie bolster springs

 

I decided to leave for now the question of the end-on appearance of replacement bogies and diverted to a simpler matter of building bogies for a coach in the middle of the rake where the ends are not so visible. I went back to my Brassmasters bogies. As I had in fact bought two pairs of these, I made up a third bogie as per the supplied instructions so that I had a matching pair. This time I aimed to build it complete with stepboards before fitting these to the one already made. However before getting to that I tried to represent the bolster springs visible in the chassis

 

Referring back again to Stephen Williams' 4mm coach part one, he demonstrated the addition of the transverse springing characteristic of the coaches when built. However "I'm indebted to m'learned friend” @Compound2632  who advised that these had gone by 1920 and are thus not relevant to my time period. [Memo to self: remember to dig out that unopened packet of castings and flog it].

 

Replacement helical springs were fitted to these coaches. The best illustration of these is possibly in Lacey & Dow vol 2, opposite the Contents page. The instructions for   Branchlines' clerestory kits (another story - probably 5 years into the future at my rate of progress) suggest taking a 6BA bolt and splitting it in half to simulate these springs. Not having such a thing, I looked up its approximate threadsize. According to Google this is 2.3 mm, approximating to 7 inches in real life. This seemed rather small, certainly compared with the photograph in L & D and drawings of the later Bain bogies which had springs of around 12” diameter. However in my garage I have many, many gash bolts. A rummage in a tin provided something slightly under 4mm diameter which (unscientifically I know) looked more like it, so I sawed it into lengths.

 

The Ratio bogies have a plastic main stretcher. Earlier I had over-enthusiastically cleaned the sideframe mouldings of unwanted protrusions, thereby removing the mountings for this stretcher. However, I think they might have put the stretcher in a bit high anyway. I drilled the stretcher at each end to take a length of “spring” and then discovered these to be slightly too long to clear the underneath of the pivot wires for the brass chassis, so a bit of fettling ensued. Finally I superglued the stretcher on top of the lowest part of the sideframes.

 

The picture shows the raw, unpainted springs. Comparing to the prototype I bemoan the fact that my gash bolt collection doesn't run to left-hand threads. Life is so unfair...

bolsterspring2.JPG

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