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GCR clerestories


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I've got hold of seven old Hornby short clerestories that I'm going to be converting into GCR stock (albeit finished in LNER livery). 

 

First up is a conversion of a seven-compartment composite into a six-compartment lavatory composite. 

 

We start by leaving the outer two compartments at each end as they are; the next compartments in from each side have their outer window left behind but the door and inner window filled in.  The middle compartment disappears entirely.  We then remove the beading, as it would be as much work to alter it to match the new compartment arrangement as it would be to replace it entirely. 

 

On the roof we remove all of the detail save one pair of rainstrips.  The lights in the clerestory also have to be filled in. 

 

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Next time I'll be drilling out for the new middle compartments.

 

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The big thing to decide is, which carriages shall I model and how many of each?  I'm thinking of using five of my rake to build a suburban set- so a pair of brake thirds, an all third, a composite and ?- either a second all third or an all first. 

 

The remaining pair I think I might turn into a slip coach and a non-clerestory full brake. 

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I must admit I like assembling complete rakes so will closely study enything you do. Checking my spares looks like I have 3 brake 3rds and 2 all 2nds or 3rds to play with at the moment. Though I was also tempted to try cpnverting some to a GWR E40. I'll see what you do first though before deciding.

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As it turned out, using white putty to just fill the windows was perhaps not the greatest idea I've yet had.  Once I started to drill out new window openings, what happened was that the filler started to crack and fall out.  In some instances entire window pillars were composed entirely of filler, and they failed as soon as I took a file to them. 

 

Upshot was that I had to go back and start over. 

 

This time I simply removed the windows and window pillars for the entirety of the middle three compartments, ending up with something that looked a little like a standard gauge Lynton & Barnstaple carriage.  I was then able to start rebuilding with plastic sheet and rod. 

 

Firstly I placed longer pieces of plastic sheet inside the carriage where the new windows are, and then I fitted smaller pieces above these to build out to the width of the carriage side- you end up with a laminate of three 0.5mm pieces making up a column of final total width 1.5mm, which is a fairly strong construction.  Where the doors are, and hence where the windows are smaller, I dropped in a wider piece of plastic with a window opening in the middle of it. 

 

I was then able to make a start on the beading.  Using lengths of 1mm plastic rod I've finished the majority of one side and made a decent start on the other.  I know that this is circular in section, but my plan is to run them over with solvent to melt them down and form them a little, to remove the circular effect.  In any case, this is the state at the moment....

 

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Well well well. 

 

Lick of paint and it looks quite good!

 

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I built a very rudimentary interior of balsa wood and plastic sheet- sheet for the compartment walls and balsa for the seatbenches- and once painted in teak, dark blue and crimson I left it at that and put the roof in place. 

 

When it came to painting I put a solid light brown undercoat on, then brushcoated a thin wash of a a much darker brown above- the brushstrokes and inevitable little missed bits from only putting on one coat serving as a form of timber graining.  The only thing I have done with the bogies has been to spring the wheelsets out, paint the wheel centres in teak and drop them back in. 

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The beading I'm afraid to say is still a little heavier then I would have liked, but had I taken any more off I don't think it would have had the presence that the drawing suggested it should have.  I guess it's one of those things that has to be made a little overscale to look right.  In any case I'm happy with how it eventually came out when painted, and can't wait to finish this one and get on with the rest of the rake. 

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Do you remember (or have since seen) the article by Peter Denny on doing something similar for "Buckingham"?

 

He decided to stick with the Triang panelling as it was and just "Great Centralled" the detailing and the bogies.

 

They make typical rather than dead accurate GCR carriages (the biggest fault being the position of the ducket in the brake carriage) but they do look the part and, as a good friend of mine says, they are much better than the ones we haven't got.

 

If anybody hasn't seen them and would like to, I will happily post a photo or two.

 

I picked up a pair of carriages going cheap on a second hand stall with a view to doing something similar but they are well down the "to do" list.

 

Tony

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I have read about Denny's Triang clerestories in his 'Buckingham Great Central' book.  As I recall he wrote that they provided a quick and easy route to another rake for Buckingham, but that by the time he'd detailed and rewheeled them he felt that the effort involved was about equal to scratchbuilding a rake in the first place.  My experience with this first carriage tends to support that opinion; although about 90- 95% of the donor carriage survives, pretty much all of the detail aside from the window reveals has been replaced.  The next pair of carriages I'm planning are a pair of all thirds and I suspect for those I will keep the donors in pretty much Triang condition and keep myself just to a repaint and reworking the carriage ends and roof.  

 

I'd like to see a photo of Denny's carriages incidentally; the ones in the old Peco book aren't really all that detailed. 

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  • 3 months later...

Right, this year the plan is to complete the rake.  To complement the composite I built in September/ October I'll be converting the remainder of my Horny stock into an all-third, an all-first, a pair of brake thirds and a pair of non-clerestory full brakes. 

 

So my next project will be the all-third and the all-first; the plan is to remove the Hornby beading and replace with 0.5 or 0.4mm plastic sheet to match the beading on the carriage already completed.  I will be keeping both carriages in their 8-compartment configuration and limiting myself to the aforementioned beading and 'GC-isation' of details such as the roof ventilators.  I anticipate that the only difference between the two carriages will be that one has many '3' numerals on the doors and the other has many '1' numerals.... however knowing how I work I wouldn't be surprised if the all-first loses a compartment. 

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Looking forward to your future updates on this excelent thread, am working on a simular project to build a rake of Caledonian 6 wheel coaches from the same Triang clerestory sorce, I have enough stock to hopefully do a few 45 ft bogies coaches as well, please keep your updates coming Steve

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/78165-cir-1900-wagons-and-6-wheel-coaches-my-humble-bodgings/

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Will do! 

 

What I've done this morning has been to order some 0.5mm by 1mm plastic strip to use for the beading, the 1mm rod I used previously 1) I don't have any more of it and 2) it needed a lot of work to get it looking right.  First job on these two carriages then will be to strip them down, remove the printed LNER insignia and numbering and sand off the moulded beading and detail.  Hopefully by the time I've done that on both carriages the plastic strip will have arrived so I'll be able to start putting them back together again.  

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I've just written a fairly in-depth blog post about how work on the pair of clerestories is progressing, basically I've dismantled the Hornby models, worked up the interiors and begun replacing the beading.  A couple of photos:

 

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Showing the level of work I've managed on the exteriors.

 

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The work I've done on the interiors- floors painted, compartment partitions and weights added.

 

Next stages will be to add the seats and start repainting the exteriors.   

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  • 2 weeks later...

The all-third is finished!

 

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The all-first is coming along nicely too, about half-finished:

 

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When it comes to the brake thirds I think I'm going to keep one in Hornby's as-supplied configuration, with five compartments and a long guard's compartment, whilst the other I'm planning to rebuild much like my composite lavatory to follow the drawings in George Dow's "Great Central" and will ultimately be finished with four compartments and a pair of lavatories. 

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The 'all-first' is now finished.... as an all-third.  Turns out that there were no all-first clerestories built by or for the GCR in 1903, so I completed it as a second all-third.  This now leaves my planned suburban rake with a paucity of 1st class compartments, so guess what?  I've got to change my plans when it comes to the brakes!  I'm now planning to do a four-compartment lavatory brake third and a composite brake. 

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  • 2 months later...

Work has now started on the lavatory third brake.  Working from the drawing in Dow's 'Great Central' and comparing it to the Hornby body, I've come to the conclusion that it could potentially be quite an easy conversion (he says). 

 

Working from the passenger end of the carriage I intend to keep two of the compartments as-Hornby.  The third compartment then looses two windows (these become the space for the lavatory), whilst the third window is appended to the next compartment.  Thus the next pair of compartments are in effect shifted over by one window.  The window which is then left over is filled in and becomes part of the van space. 

 

With care it should be possible to remove the duckets whilst leaving enough material behind to form the basis of the extra door (the Hornby bodies have a double door and a single door next to the ducket- the GCR carriage has two double doors per side and no ducket).  Luckily the duckets on both sides are in the same location as the extra double door.

 

So far then I've dismantled the carriage, filled in the windows that are to be lost and removed the duckets (successfuly on one side, on the other I've got some rebuilding to do...)

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The Rev Denny modified Triang GWR clerestory coaches 50 years ago when there was very little available for GCR modellers, or indeed any scale modellers. I assumed we had come a long way since then but clearly people still like messing around with plastic. I have read the trails and errors of filler dropping out and adding extra plastic struts etc, but a simpler way is to remove the complete sides and attach etched GCR sides with Evostik (this glue remains flexible to allow for different expansion of plastic and brass). This way doesn't give one a completely pucker GC coach and the 'hard work' (for some folk) is making and fitting door handles. Nevertheless, the total time spent on one coach built with brass sides has got to be less than messing around cutting & shutting, and the end product is infinitely superior.  Just a thought.

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  • 3 weeks later...

On to the last of the rake- a composite brake.  This one is a little different from the others, in that neither of the Hornby clerestories are particularly close to the prototype. 

 

I thought about this for quite some time, and then decided that the only realistic way to go about the model was to take the Hornby brake third and cut away large chunks of the upper sides, and splice in equally large chunks of the sides from the composite carriage. 

 

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On one side of the brake carriage we cut away one window from the third compartment,  the entirety of the fourth and fifth compartments, and the guard's van as far as the rear double doors. 

 

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On the opposite side we again cut away the fourth and fifth compartments and the final third of the third.  However, this time we leave the single guard's door in place and cut away from the ducket to the double doors instead. 

 

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On the composite, we cut away three compartments (however we split this lump down into two compartments and one compartment), and on this side we cut away also one window from a fourth compartment.  In this instance I cut this window as part of the single compartment cut. 

 

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On the other side we cut away just three compartments, however again we split this down to a two-compartment length and a one-compartment length. 

 

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Then we introduce the parts from the composite into the carcass of the brake.  The two-compartment lengths go into the passenger end, so it appears we have two complete compartments, two windows on their own (which we shall deal with later) and then two more compartments.  On this side I fitted the 'one and a bit' compartment length too, which gives us another odd window and a fifth compartment.  On the other side I fitted the one-compartment length into the cut-away guards van and the two-compartment length into the cut-away passenger end. 

 

Eventually this will give us a carriage composed thus:  Two third class compartments, a lavatory, a third class compartment, a first class compartment, a lavatory, another first class compartment and the guards compartment. 

 

Meanwhile the cut-away bits from the brake third were fitted any old how to the composite to give this result: 

 

DSCF2214_zps2fd7cc24.jpg

 

My plans for this coach mean that at this stage it doesn't particularly matter as to the layout of windows or doors. 

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