A Tale of 3 Ex-Kirk 4mm LNER Coaches

[MikeTrice]

Rebuilt Kit: Details - Part 3a: Corridor Connectors Revisited.

 

The more I looked at the corridor connectors featured in my last post, the less I liked them. Having mentioned additional steps I have taken in the past at the end of that post I decided I really needed to remake the connectors using that technique.

 

In the past I have always made the bellows from 4 panes which resulted in 3 visible folds in the final bellows. Although I had GAs showing three folds most photographs seem to only show two. For this reason I recut the bellows using 3 panes:

 

These were folded, cut down the middle and assembled exactly the same as the previous 4 pane version.

 

This time one of the end plates had Evo Stik spread on it and a piece of black cotton placed across it:

 

With the glue still wet the bellows were then stuck to the end plate trapping the cotton thread:

 

The cotton thread limits how far the bellows project from the coach end when in an uncoupled state. To provide this a piece of 60thou styrene was placed on the bellows, the bellows compressed and the cotton thread knotted.

 

With the surplus cotton trimmed from the knot and the spacer removed the bellows now compress and expand. Evo Stik was then applied to the inner end plate and glued over the cotton to the bellows and weighted down to dry.

 

A strip of black lightweight bin liner was cut and one edge trimmed straight:

 

Being careful the avoid gumming up the bellows 5 minute epoxy was spread around the top edge of the end plates and thebin liner stretched over it:

 

When the epoxy had set the surplus bin liner was trimmed away using a new scalpel blade.

 

When fixed to te coach the resulting bellows are a great improvement on the previous ones and look more prototypical:

 

 

For the inner end of the coach I gave the cotton slightly more freedom so the bellows can extend further. How much your bellows need to project will depend on your track curve radius and your coupling gaps so some experimentation might be necessary.

 

 

 

 

Edited October 19, 2023 by MikeTrice