A31 auto coach hel.

[Graham456]

Haveing picked up a keyser,s A31 autocoach last weekend at Ray Heards Bridgwater toy fair because he actually had a very well built example, which had a roof that fitted, unbowed sides Seats and floor fitted and nice free running totally wrong bogies, now putting that last bit aside as there is plenty about that if you do a search through the forum,as I have.

What I want to know is haveing looked through the my wild swan books there are not very good at under frame detail, because it looks a bit bare under there, I can see I need to fit what looks like two gas tanks eather side of the steps on the drivers side, or left hand side as you look at the driveing end, I guess two vac clyinders inboard of the A brackets on the solebars, but of what type Dean hanging or later lifter type. And if there are gas tanks I assume no battery boxes?

Anything else I have missed out other than brake rigging, can't put that on until I know what sort of clyinders I need to fit

Cheers and happy holidays

[K14]

As these were converted from SRMs in 1934/35 I'd doubt that they were fitted with the Dean cylinders - conventional vac is far more likely.

You're correct in assuming that gas tanks mean no battery or regulator boxes.

 

The other things that help fill the space in the Black Bit are the underframe trussing, the through regulator gear & the steam heat pipe. It's quite crowded down there!

 

In Vol 1, page 114, of John Lewis' Trailer books there's a GA of a 59' 5-1/4" U/frame dated July 1906. Whilst it's not identical to the one you need, odds are it's sufficiently similar to glean useful information. I can't read the diameter of the gas tanks (either 1' 8" or 1' 6"), but you might find that a high-res scan at, say, 1200dpi could reveal more.

 

P.

[JDaniels]

Some time ago I did some work on the K's auto trailer which does in fact have a number of inaccuracies. I was fortunate in that I had in front of me an excellent article from Martin Goodall in the January 1979 MRC which detailed the inaccuracies but confirmed that this was in fact type A31. The bogies are of course incorrect, (I used the 7 foot pattern which look a little odd albeit correct), there should be no vertical mouldings (apparently shown on the official drawing but did not find their way on to the real thing), the bolection mouldings are incorrect and the roof is the wrong profile. I did not change the vertical or bolection mouldings but I substituted the roof for one from the Airfix auto trailer. Having recently seen a photo of an A31 trailer in BR days it is apparent that as these vehicles reached old age a good deal of the panelling was sheeted over making it look very untidy. I can't be too specific about the underframe detail as the article did not go into this much detail but it was poinmted out that the steps which are very visible are incorrect. The steps on the prototype, in fact all auto trailers, were made of steel rods and are better represented on the model by wire. I did put some underframe detail on my model, notably the brake rigging and the rodding associated with an auto trailer but bearing in mind the inaccuracies in the body I wonder whether it is worth going to the bother of detailing a part of the model that cannot be seen. A photo of my model is attached (I hope!).