jetmorgan Posted February 18, 2017 Share Posted February 18, 2017 Just back from the Tonbridge show and I picked up a couple of kit built coach models.I just want to try to identify the maker and also the models they are supposed to represent...if any. Both coaches seem to be have a metal body and a metal floor and both have a full interior. One is a 9 compartment non corridor and the other is a 6 compartment brake. Both are painted in GWR chocolate & brown and while the 9 compartment coach looks reasonably Great Western the brake looks a bit more Midland in design but that may just be the duckets on the guards section. I don't recall seeing many or any GWR coaches with duckets. So any suggestions anyone Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold unravelled Posted February 18, 2017 RMweb Gold Share Posted February 18, 2017 Graham Farish suburbans, by the look of bogies and underframe castings. Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jetmorgan Posted February 18, 2017 Author Share Posted February 18, 2017 Graham Farish suburbans, by the look of bogies and underframe castings. Dave Managed to do a bit further investigating and get one of the coaches pulled apart. Yes you are right the body is the same as the Graham Farish suburbans, matched with my Grafar Southern suburbans. Only differences are that the Graham Farish name isn't on the plastic moulding and the floor is made out of a piece of folded steel, the bogies are metal and held to the floor with bolt and screws and the roof is brass with a brass insert in the top of the body so I wonder if a company bought up Grafar bodies and made their own floor, bogies and roof. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium petethemole Posted February 18, 2017 RMweb Premium Share Posted February 18, 2017 These may be an early manifestation of the kit version, predating the plastic bodied RTR coaches. I think they are loosely (?) based on LMS suburbans, whereas the corridor version was based on SR Maunsells. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hmrspaul Posted February 18, 2017 Share Posted February 18, 2017 These may be an early manifestation of the kit version, predating the plastic bodied RTR coaches. I think they are loosely (?) based on LMS suburbans, whereas the corridor version was based on SR Maunsells. Agreed. Definately a Graham Farish product from the mid 1960s to represent LMS suburbans. The most difficult part of the kit was getting the torpedo ventilators on fairly neatly. I've still got several downstairs from my teenage days. They had an interior, magic for their day! Paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jetmorgan Posted February 18, 2017 Author Share Posted February 18, 2017 Agreed. Definately a Graham Farish product from the mid 1960s to represent LMS suburbans. The most difficult part of the kit was getting the torpedo ventilators on fairly neathly. I've still got several downstairs from my teenage days. They had an interior, magic for their day! Paul Yes I will have to do something about the roofs and get some detail onto them and I might do something about the coach ends as well with some detail on those as I can do the Southern ones at the same time. I might go through the GWR coach plans I have to see it there is anything they are close to. I think they are still perfectly acceptable on a layout. I know they aren't of any particular prototype and they are generic mouldings but the Southern coaches look like pre grouping Southern coaches and the corridor GWR look like early Churchward. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold The Johnster Posted February 18, 2017 RMweb Gold Share Posted February 18, 2017 They are deffo Grafar, with the LMS/Midland bogies. GF produced ckd kit and rtr suburban and mainline corridor coaches loosely based on LMS suburbans and Maunsell Southern corridors in all of the big four liveries as sort of 'generic' 1920s coaches, all with LMS/Midland bogies and underframes, the latter being the truss girder arrangement attached to the body floor in the same way as contemporary Triang mk1s; rtr. offernings in the 60s were so bad that they could pass muster as generic pre-group or early big 4 stock!. I suspect that a previous owner of yours has 'upgraded' the chassis as the Grafar stock was, IIRC, all plastic, and the progenitor of the N gauge stock they still turn out. If you are happy with them, then enjoy them and do not take to much notice of my negative comments... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Colin Posted February 19, 2017 RMweb Premium Share Posted February 19, 2017 Agree with last post - I bought a couple of those Farish suburban s back in the late 1960s (spent all my pocket money for a few weeks as I remember). I think they were probably the only non corridor stock available at the time apart from the Triang GWR clerestory coaches. The roofs as supplied were bright gloss yellow (!!!!), I just can't imagine why. They were basically screw assembly but couldn't be made to run freely, weighed a ton and light footed Triang locos such as my L1 4-4-0 struggled with just 2 coaches. The doors on one of the coaches - possibly the brake - were back to front on one side, something that was perpetuated for a while at least in the later all plastic rtr Farish stock in both 00 and N. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold unravelled Posted February 19, 2017 RMweb Gold Share Posted February 19, 2017 I dug out my GF suburbans, bought by my father as kits and never built, though I have painted and stripped the bodies several times. Mine are the same as those in the OP, with metal floors and no maker's identification on the body moulding. Is the plastic floored version shown on the Southern painted ones above a later development, or were kits and rtr different? Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Colin Posted February 19, 2017 RMweb Premium Share Posted February 19, 2017 As I remember, the rtr coaches were all plastic, but the error with the sides definitely persisted. They were pretty much the same as the kits in that they could be disassembled into a near-identical set of parts. The roofs were improved with some rudimentary detail and the plastic bogies were a definite improvement - my coaches were quite light and very free running. The suburbans definitely looked "a bit LMS" to me, while I bodged a few of the corridor coaches into a vague likeness of SR Maunsell stock - IMHO they were better than Hornby's "SR" coaches of the time which were GWR stock turned out in green with altered roof detail. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Il Grifone Posted February 19, 2017 Share Posted February 19, 2017 IIRC these Farish coaches appeared in three versions. First around 1950 in the same plastic as the infamous Pullmans, with the same tendency to warp. Later, in the early sixties. they were released in kit form in a stable plastic, with tinplate roof and floor and die-cast truss rod/accumulator units (the same design as used on the Pullmans, but they don't share their tendency to disintegrate) and an awful die-cast version of the SR 8 foot bogie,which suffered from a reluctance for the wheels to turn, as previously stated. This is the version here in chocolate and cream. A corridor version followed a year or two later (I made the mistake of buying one!). Learning from their errors the all plastic RTR type followed in the late sixties. These have pinpoint axles and are very free running. As stated the non-corridors are of LMS pattern and the corridors are SR. Neither are exact models of anything. I did start converting a non-corridor coach into a 1930s GWR full third. This yet another of my stalled projects.... Duckets were a feature of early GWR coaches but the feature was dropped in the early part of the twentieth century. By the twenties, they were being removed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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