Dublo 25kv BR emu

[sagaguy]

For a bit of light relief from waving hot soldering irons about,i found this stripped Dublo emu trailer car in my box of bits.I bought a couple of Cl.303? moulded ends from DC kitsand fitted them to the coach.My question is,what to use for the cab roof profile,layered plastic card or a piece  of balsa sanded to shape once i work out the profile?.As you can see i have a kitmaster motor bogie,several in fact to power it.

 

                                 Ray

[TinTracks]

On 12/05/2023 at 15:48, sagaguy said:

.My question is,what to use for the cab roof profile,layered plastic card or a piece  of balsa sanded to shape once i work out the profile

Hi Ray. 

 That's a very interesting project. Some time ago I had a go at a ''home brewed'' Brighton Belle using some old scrap Triang ''shorty'' Pullmans. I got round the cab roof profile by cutting the original roof short by about an inch then extending a sort of platform/false cab ceiling to fit the cab front. I then built up a rough roof front profile using scrap plasticard bits. When all was dried and set hard I built up on the scrap plasticard with Milliput to get an approximate cab roof profile. Again I left it for a week or so to set hard then got to work with a file. I'm sorry to say that the project is still languishing in the unfinished pile some ten years later but last time I clapped eyes on it it was still in good shape with no warping or twisting 

 On reflection maybe the balsa wood option might be less work.

 Regards, Rich.

[roythebus1]

I'm one of "those people" who read that article when it came out and eventually made that 4 car unit in the mid 1960s! Note the article has a 2-character headcode box which none of them had. I went on to make a couple of the ER units. All these survived until about 30 years ago when I off-loaded them in the MRC's exhibition shop! 

It seems a shame now to cut up collectors items, but at that period in time they were available "quite cheaply" as Triang and Wrenn were flogging off the coaches off at 10/6d and the motor coaches for under a fiver each.

[sagaguy]

The trailer coach i`m using for this project came to me as a wreck,badley painted blue with bars across the windows so it had to be stripped.For the other cars,i`ll use second hand SD coaches with home produced overlays.

 

                   Ray.

[roythebus1]

I eventually tried making a 4 car from Comet coach sides, Adrian Swain underframes and scratch-built ends. It's still in my box of to-do or get rid of things! Started in 1985 I think..

[SRman]

Ray, the ends you have look like classes 304/305/308 or 504 type rather than a 303/311.

For the domed roof end, always a bit tricky, see if you can locate a Triang EMU roof or Hornby 2 BIL one. They aren't entirely correct but might give a good starting point. You'd still have to add a headcode box.

As for the 2-character headcode, that's a bit of a hash-up: classes 304, 305 and 308 had 4-character boxes, whereas the 2-car class 504 had only a destination box above the windscreens (in the roof dome) and 2-character headcodes displayed in the centre cab window. more akin to standard SR practice.

[Captain Slough]

This 5-BEL power car made about 1996 based on a Hornby-Dublo 4037 Pullman brake had a cab end roof made by adding the flat level first then gluing standing up many pieces of 1mm thick plastikard forming a sort of fan-outward from the end of the original roofline to the front of where the cab roof would be

 

I then filed the oversized fins of plastic to about the right shape, while dripping superglue into the gaps between them. The filings from the plastikard dropping into the fresh glue made up a relatively smooth roof with the right sort of compound curve