Building a freelance-ish 1950s Railcar for 009

[25kV]

The other week my dad (who has recently extended his 009 layout) sent me a link to the website of the County Gate L&B-based layout, wondering where they'd got their interesting range of railcars from.  He fancied something along those lines himself.  Delving deeper I discovered they were all scratch-built, using a powered chassis in between two or more trailers (Stadler style).  In my infinite wisdom I immediately thought, "Let's see if I can build one!"

 

While the County Gate railcars are styled towards art-deco for the most part, reflecting their supposed 1920s build dates, my dad's layout is set in the mid-1950s, and his railcar would be new.  It seemed most likely that a narrow gauge establishment seeking a cheap-and-cheerful railcar solution would ask a coachbuilder to build the bodywork.

 

 

Step up the Duple Roadmaster, which, after a scouring of the Oxford die-cast catalogue, appeared to be ideal for narrow-gauging - it has a full-width cab, regular spaced and shaped windows, but a distinct period styling that would look the part.  In addition, my dad had a collection of the Dinky die-cast Roadmasters when he was a kid, so it seemed appropriate.  eBay and TMC provided second hand Roadmasters for very reasonable sums ... four in total. 

 

 

My initial plan was to build two trailer cars with driving cabs at the outer end, and then a short cabless motor car to place between them.  This would require a total of four inner ends ... but then it occurred to me that giving the motor car two cabs would allow for very flexible combinations - driving trailer+motor, driving trailer+motor+driving trailer, and, since there would be plenty of bits available from four bus bodies, driving trailer+motor+trailer+driving trailer.

 

Finding the Bodies

 

So with bodies acquired, the next issue was loading gauge.  The Roadmasters are nearly standard-gauge in width, and while there's just enough clearance on the 009 layout, they were going to look over-sized - so cutting down the width would be necessary.  Time to dismantle and remove some of the more egregious bus features such as destination indicators, tail lights, and registration numbers.

 

 

Photoshopping the bodies around a bit gave this kind of solution, with a narrower profile, and some cutting about to make the saloons.  :

 

 

Using this illustration as a guide (which I'd scaled to be 1:1 on screen), I figured I'd need to remove 4 or 5mm from the centre-line of each body - a somewhat daunting task.

 

Masking tape was used to create cutting guides:

 

 

And then some tentative strokes were made with the razor saw.

 

And this was the result! 

 

 

Wait - no - this was the result:

 

 

Slightly narrower when compared to the unmodified example on the left. 

 

Unfortunately my cuts weren't perfectly straight so some trimming and filing was necessary to get the halves to sit together reasonably well.  Some strengthening joins were made on the insides:

 

 

Followed by an initial fill-and-sand of the remaining gaps.

 

 

All of these have yet to be cut in half (at least) to form into the trailer coach bodies, but I'm aiming to have them reasonably solid so that I'm not juggling too many pieces.

 

The railcar will have a shorter body height than the Roadmaster, so I had planned to shave a few millimeters off the die-cast lower body sections, and do a similar narrowing to match the upper body.  The original intention was to hacksaw the metal and use appropriate sections on the trailer cars, but after a lot of cutting of the first one, I'm not sure it's going to be a great solution.  Instead I think the easier way to go is to create the lower bodies out of plasticard, which will also help with affixing them to the underframes.

 

Underframes

 

A quick search revealed a surprisingly affordable, and very tiny N-gauge Kato 11-105 Bo-Bo chassis.  This was obtained, along with two second hand Lima Mk1s, and a Lima Siphon-G (slightly shorter underframe for the intermediate trailer). 

 

 

The N-gauge bodies were removed and most of the underframe detailing chopped off.  In its place will be square-section plastic rod extending out on each side to support the bus bodies.  I'm keeping the N-gauge couplings for now, as it's unlikely to need to couple to any of the other 009 stock... Famous last words.

 

 

Next Steps

 

Still to come - chopping the upper bodies to make space for passenger doors and to rearrange for the motor car and intermediate trailer - followed by fabricating the lower bodysides and doorways, and somehow putting the pieces back together in a fashion that won't self-dismantle as soon as it enters a tunnel. 

 

Plus figuring out how to mount the motor car's body on the tiny Kato underframe - and add a bit of weight to it.  Watch this space...

Edited March 2 by 25kV
Typographical Errors

[25kV]

A Bit of Progress

 

Here we see the first support struts are superglued to the three underframes.  These will, in theory, bear longitudinal members attached to the insides of the bodywork.  The Siphon G underframe was found to be too short so had a 10mm extension put in.  Will this be enough though?  Can we instill a sense of foreboding and foreshadowing?

 

 

 

Cutting Up The Bodies Even More

 

Having taken 4mm out from the centre-line of the four Duple Roadmasters, and cautiously glued them back together, it was time to split them in half a second time, but at 90° to the first cut.

 

 

Oh the chaos.  The upper two will be driving trailers - each has an extra bit of roofing waiting to plug the gap - a door will fit into the bodywork underneath this.  The third is an intermediate trailer formed from the back end of two buses, while in the foreground is the motor vehicle, using two cabs stuck back-to-back.  The passenger windows will hopefully be replaced by grilles in due course.

 

 

Driving trailer with its extra roof section in place.  It's a bit out of alignment, but with a bit of filler and sanding, you'll still be able to see it later.

 

 

 

The three trailer cars taking shape.

 

 

 

The Motor Car

 

I suppose since it has cabs, you could classify this as a mini locomotive.  Either way, here's the guts of the mini-beast, the Kato Bo-Bo chassis, with some initial supporting struts glued on board.  There's not a huge amount of room on this little underframe.

 

 

 

Meanwhile its bodywork is the first to have its skirt added, replacing the planned die-cast cut-up job from the original bus models.  As it happens, gluing these to the 'tabs' on the plastic body produce a slight tumblehome effect, which is quite pleasing and a little bit more "railway" than the slab of the bus side.  These will be detailed further later.

 

 

 

Test mounting on the underframe...

 

 

... followed by a proof-of-concept test run.

 

 

 

Finally, a little bit of interior detailing - a couple of partitions and the first drivers desk (the sorta backwards-Z thing top left) cut from the dashboard of the bus model, and mounted slightly higher so that it's visible from the outside.

 

 

 

Next Steps

 

While adding support struts to the trailer car underframes, I realised that the bodies of adjacent vehicles were going to just come into contact on 1st radius curves, which meant slightly adjusting the driving vehicles to have a shorter rear overhang.  Unfortunately I also concluded that the intermediate trailer's underframe was still too short - having already chopped it about, I figured that another regular Lima Mk1 would probably be an easier option than attempting to break-and-remake the Siphon, so eBay has been scoured for a CK going cheap.

 

Once it's here and similarly set up for the body to rest on, the remainder of the side skirts (and mid-body doors) will be fitted to all three trailers.  After that, it'll be time to address the cab front lower sections and the "rear" end of the trailers, and figure out exactly how the bodies will be fixed onto the underframes.  (I have a plan, but it's by no means certain to end up that way!)  At the same time there is the issue of the interiors - the Lima underframes are definitely taking up some of the passenger space, so there's gonna be some chopping of seats and legs, most likely! 

 

The motor car requires some weight adding - it's practically floating off the track at the moment.  Hopefully this can be mounted low enough not to cause come entertaining centre-of-gravity issues later! 

[25kV]

Internal Issues

 

The interior seat mouldings from the Duple Roadmaster die-cast models were naturally too wide for this narrow-gauge conversion ... well actually they would have just about squeezed in there with the reinforced side panels removed, but there aren't very many NG coaches with 2+2 seating, so it was out with hacksaws to narrow everything down.

 

Naturally it wasn't as simple as just hacking off one column of seats - the Lima Mk1 underframes take out a chunk of lower-legroom, so in the end I had to cut each seat out individually, and trim them to just below the cushions in order to fit properly.

 

 

 

Having developed fingertip callouses from this exercise, it was with some relief that the many seats were cemented untidily to some thin plasticard strips.  Like railbuses of old, passengers can sit behind the front-right windscreen at both ends, so, to take full advantage of the forward view, the double seats were arranged on the right, and the singles on the left behind the driver.  For the intermediate trailer, a symmetrical arrangement was created, with implied reversible seats in some areas.  Two partitions for the drivers' half-cabs were cut from a bit of clear packaging - seen at the top here:

 

 

 

A quick spray with Halfords-the-Grey...

 

 

 

... followed by a spray of green and some serious medical misfortune for the random passengers, most of whom had their legs cut off below the knees.

 

 

 

To give a moderately firm base for the somewhat flimsy passenger inserts, the underframes were given a slab of plasticard over the recessed weight.

 

 

 

While on the subject of underframes, the replacement chassis for the intermediate trailer showed up and was immediately shorn of its CK body, had a bogie swap with the Siphon G (dodgy coupling), and had body support beams and slabs added.

 

 

 

A Need to Vent

 

Having had a go at making my own grille slats using a variety of invented techniques (such as stacking many layers of thin plastic strip, applying glue down the edge, and then sorta "shuffling" them into an angled stack and hoping the glue would hold them) I turned instead to the box in the attic and found an already cut-up HST power car.  This donated sections of the main bodyside grille for both sides, duly stuck onto the windows.  A braver man than I would have attempted to cut out the windows and inset the grilles, but I'm gonna live with the weird protrusions as part of the "design".  At least until I find it's fouling the loading gauge somehow.

 

 

 

Skirting the Issue

 

With the side skirts already applied to the motor car, it was time to face the trailers.  Two layers were used for each side - a 1mm thick back plate, with the passenger door cemented to the top, and cut-outs for the moulded tabs on the upper body, plus a 0.75mm thick front plate with a cut-out for the door.  These combine to match the upper body's stepped lower edge, and also make a pretty strong overall structure.

 

 

 

Here's the results on one of the driving cars.  Light scores were made at the cab ends to allow subtle folds in both layers, to match the narrowing cab.

 

 

 

And with all the side-skirts in place, a quick test-assemble!  (The intermediate trailer is sitting on its original underframe, leading to very tight clearances on curves - hence the longer replacement.)

 

 

 

Next up were the vehicle ends.  Again, lightly-scoring the card allowed for a gentle fold to match the shape of the nose at the cab ends; some quarter-curved plastic rod helped to form the corners on the "back" ends.  Once again, the effect of gluing the side-skirts to the upper body tabs produced a gentle tumblehome, and this was worked in to the vehicle end shapes.

 

 

 

Some additional internal supports on the corners and a couple of passes with filler closed the gaps.  Here's how things were looking after one pass.

 

 

 

The edges of the doors were trimmed with thin card to minimise gaps (there's zero structural space to play with) and force the doors to stand roughly at the same inset from the outer skin.

 

 

 

Waistlines and Hems

 

In an effort to reproduce a little more of the Roadmaster styling, plastic strip was curved around the bodies, mimicking similar raised features on the buses.  Some ended up straighter than others.  😳

 

 

 

For the cab ends, a 4mm punch was applied to the bottom edges of the upper bands, and a short length of 4mm tubing stuck in place to represent headlights.

 

 

 

Then many many small strips were chopped to represent extensions of the bodyside panel ribs between the two raised bands.

 

 

 

Resulting in a reasonable sense of continuity above and below the waist.

 

 

 

Similar short strips were cut and curved then stuck across the "back" windows, to hide the cut line down the glass...

 

 

 

... with similar strips being placed down the front windscreens.

 

 

 

A Weighty Issue

 

There's only so much room inside that tiny motor car ... so this was the solution.  Initially I attempted to stick a couple of these weights to the inside walls, but there wasn't room for the motor between them, so they were prised off again and mounted atop the motor with the assistance of a plasticard structure built on any available surface.

 

This has resulted in a fairly top-heavy vehicle, but it'll probably survive the peaceful environs of the 009 layout without too much incident.  I hope.

 

 

 

See How They Run

 

With all the pieces more-or-less complete, it was time to loosely assemble the full set and see how it runs.  Bodies dropped on to underframes; passenger inserts installed; power on.

 

 

 

The Kato motor handled the full set very nicely.  The outer trailers have minor wobbles, probably a result of having 40 year old Lima bogies under them.  I'm not currently concerned about this...   but am willing to change my mind in the future.

 

 

 

My dad's 009 layout has a reasonable gradient, so the set was also tested on this makeshift, much steeper rise, featuring discarded components from the build - a Roadmaster die-cast lower body, the Siphon-G underframe, and one of the bogies from the CK underframe.  😉   Climbed with no problems - fingers crossed for similar performance when finished.

 

 

 

Next Steps

 

Construction is pretty much complete - some short strips will be added to the doors to match the waist band, and possibly a couple of 'go faster' strips on the cab fronts, mimicking the bus design. 

 

However the next task is going to involve paint, and this is where I'll either make a horrible mess, or make a catastrophic mess.  Only time will tell which it will be!

 

[25kV]

 

Going Around the Bend

 

With the replacement underframe in place, the cabless trailer now swings nicely on first radius 009 curves.

 

 

Uh oh...

 

 

Painted into a Corner

 

Because the bus bodies were moulded in clear plastic, I was reluctant to dunk them in anything to remove the existing paint, just in case the glazing took a hit somehow - especially since I wanted to keep the printed window frames and cream window pillars of the existing bus paint schemes.  So after various methods to remove the printed details on the bodyside came to nought, I decided to thoroughly mask the windows, and spray white primer across everything below them (bus upper, plus scratch-built lower), then top-coat with Ribble Bus Cream. 

 

My first mistake was to use a trick I'd seen elsewhere, of lightly painting along the masking tape edge with the colour one wants under the masking tape (which in this case, was the same colour I wanted outside the masking tape).  So I touched in a line of cream, left 24 hours, discovered it was still sticky, and waited again.  Eventually it seemed to have set - but it probably hadn't, as the primer spray reacted with it, causing it to curl and fragment, leaving the bodysides in a horrible mess (prediction #1!).

 

I left everything a couple of days to set, then sanded it all back, trying not to catch the windows in the process - though now the bodysides were much more uneven than I'd started out with.  I also ran out of primer, and the "next day" delivery of more seemed to have taken a week to arrive until I happened to look in the garden tool box outside the front door to find it had been stashed there by the postie some 6 days previous. 

 

The primer went on OK this time, followed by a brushed coat or two of the cream.  This is the state of play with the masking tape removed, prior to painting the roofs and raised bands.

 

 

BUT.  If you look closely, you'll notice that in a couple of places, the cream below the windows has literally peeled off the primer as the masking was removed.  More areas flaked off shortly afterwards.  So pop went my ideas of masking over the cream, using a darker spray primer for the roof and bands, and spraying everything green. 

 

After removing the worst of the peeling cream, I repainted it by hand again, and hoped for the best.  Curiously, the cream only peeled from the primer on the areas from the bus bodies - my lower body extensions did not suffer in the same way, so I can only conclude some kind of weird over-smoothness to the upper body plastic, that caused the primer to also somehow be over smooth...  I have no idea. 

 

Anyway, having noticed that the lower body wasn't peeling, I felt confident that I could mask the cream down there ... and eventually just went ahead and masked both sides of the waist band.  Naturally after painting it green and removing the masking, vast areas of upper body cream also peeled straight off again.  😐

 

By this time I'd stopped caring, creamed by hand for a third time, masked the lower band, painted it green, and then reverted to childhood and simply hand-painted the roofs without masking or priming.  Fortunately Humbrol No. 3 is still the best, and covered in a couple of coats.

 

Unfortunately during the earlier priming, some of the white had escaped under the masking and deposited itself on the glazing.  Various chemicals and processes were tried out to remove it from the windows, which successfully removed the printed window frames, but not the primer overspray.  So this was chipped off with the tip of a knife, but naturally left a mark and some misting of the glass.  So now the paintwork has reached catastrophic mess proportions, meeting prediction #2!

 

Apparently no black lining pens exist north of Dundee, so the missing window frames were put back in using a very fine brush and a nearly, but not quite, steady hand.  Fortunately silver lining pens do exist, and thus the silver frames and silver lining below the roof could be reapplied where necessary. 

 

 

 

Drawing a Line

 

The silver lining pen was additionally used to add a silver line under the windows (a styling feature of the Roadmaster bodywork), and to paint the windscreen dividing strips.

 

Despite the masking between cream and green stripes on the lower body, leaks had occurred, and some amount of unevenness was obvious on all vehicles.  Some delicate touching up led to an ever decreasing circle of overpainting with green and overpainting with cream until madness began to set it.  Eventually my rational brain told me to stop and be happy with it.  It is not going to be perfect, so just move on.

 

 

All Aboard!

 

Interiors were attached to underframes, drivers added to both driving trailer cabs, and a guard to the motor coach cab in the middle.

 

 

 

I printed out some decals, which eventually worked reasonably well - glad I made twice as many as I needed...

 

 

(Please pay no attention to the masking disasters.)

 

 

And with the bodies stuck onto the underframes, the railcar was declared "done".

 

 

 

 

 

Shiny!

 

If it were for my layout, I'd probably run over it with some semi-gloss varnish, and add a bit of weathering, but it's not, so for now at least it's going to be very shiny and new.

 

Sadly, it's not as neat as I'd anticipated or hoped, but such is life, and once it's over on my dad's railway, hopefully the more egregious rough edges will disappear into the scenery.  The plan is to take it over this evening, where a couple more photos will no doubt be taken and added here.

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Fascinating.

 

Have you ever seen pictures of the old Southend Pier Railwsy railcars?

 

I think you might have re-invented them.

[25kV]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Fascinating.

 

Have you ever seen pictures of the old Southend Pier Railwsy railcars?

 

I think you might have re-invented them.

Wow yes - there's a similarity!  Though I would say the Pier trains look more like cut-and-shut Blackpool Coronation trams!  😉

[Dagworth]

I had similar problems with paint not behaving as usual on some Hornby 58 cabs. I eventually came to the conclusion that they were made of polycarbonate which doesn't like enamel.

 

Andi

[Nearholmer]

If you want real bus bodies used as NG coaches, delve into the history of the Bord na Mona 3ft gauge lines in Ireland, because they had several old buses mounted on bogies for staff transport, as well as the passenger saloons from ex-West Clare railcars, which were themselves very much bus technology.

Edited March 23 by Nearholmer

[25kV]

17 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

If you want real bus bodies used as NG coaches, delve into the history of the Bord na Mona 3ft gauge lines in Ireland, because they had several old buses mounted on bogies for staff transport, as well as the passenger saloons from ex-West Clare railcars, which were themselves very much bus technology.

Those were lurking in the back of my mind when I was trying to decide how to "style" the vehicles as 1950s-built.  Albeit in my case not repurposing buses, but seeing what might happen if a coachbuilder was to build railcar bodies in a similar style.

 

[25kV]

Argh!

 

Best laid plans and all... 

 

Despite having tested the railcar up some fairly steep gradients, it wasn't possible to combine gradients with curves on my test set-up, so upon arrival at Little Langdale, the first ascent of the hill resulted in a lot of wheel spinning and not a lot of forward motion.  Even without the "bonus" trailer car, things were not moving on up. 

 

In addition, the driving trailers kept jumping the rails at a couple of spots where the first radius curves had been laid a little too tightly - slightly kinked at the joins.  This meant the bogies, which were fine with unkinked first radius curves, were reaching their rotation limits under the bodyside skirts, and derailing. 

 

So the whole train returned to the workbench, where the outer corners of each trailer bogie were carved off to give an extra few degrees of swing inside the skirts.  Meanwhile, the motor car was dismantled, and extra weights added over the power bogie. 

 

Following another test run this morning, the railcar successfully made several circuits running with just the two driving trailers (this had been the original intention anyway, so no huge loss to run as a two car set).  It can just about make it with the extra trailer, but struggles a little at the top of the hill. 

 

Anyway - here it is in its new home:

 

 

Passing the stone circle as the rubber-tyred version of the railcar stops to set down tourists.

 

 

Pulling into Elterwater station.

 

 

The trailer car gets a spin out behind Prince!

 

 

And finally, just to prove it just about can, the whole set up by the quarry.

[009 micro modeller]

21 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Fascinating.

 

Have you ever seen pictures of the old Southend Pier Railwsy railcars?

 

I think you might have re-invented them.

Exactly what I thought they reminded me of. 1949 stock I think? The power car on its own looks a tiny bit like one of the ‘heritage-bodied’ Parry designs from a few years ago, while in general the 1950s road coach styling is reminiscent of the Bridgnorth Castle Hill (funicular) Railway car bodies.* On that theme, perhaps you could now build some loco-hauled stock in a similar style with other bus bodies? It all looks very good so far.
 

*Edit: these are similarly made ‘in the style of’ bus bodies by a coach builder, I think on the frames of the previous cars, rather than being made from old buses.

Edited March 24 by 009 micro modeller

[009 micro modeller]

1 hour ago, 25kV said:

Argh!

 

Best laid plans and all... 

 

Despite having tested the railcar up some fairly steep gradients, it wasn't possible to combine gradients with curves on my test set-up, so upon arrival at Little Langdale, the first ascent of the hill resulted in a lot of wheel spinning and not a lot of forward motion.  Even without the "bonus" trailer car, things were not moving on up. 

 

In addition, the driving trailers kept jumping the rails at a couple of spots where the first radius curves had been laid a little too tightly - slightly kinked at the joins.  This meant the bogies, which were fine with unkinked first radius curves, were reaching their rotation limits under the bodyside skirts, and derailing. 

 

So the whole train returned to the workbench, where the outer corners of each trailer bogie were carved off to give an extra few degrees of swing inside the skirts.  Meanwhile, the motor car was dismantled, and extra weights added over the power bogie. 

 

Following another test run this morning, the railcar successfully made several circuits running with just the two driving trailers (this had been the original intention anyway, so no huge loss to run as a two car set).  It can just about make it with the extra trailer, but struggles a little at the top of the hill. 

 

Anyway - here it is in its new home:

 

 

Passing the stone circle as the rubber-tyred version of the railcar stops to set down tourists.

 

 

Pulling into Elterwater station.

 

 

The trailer car gets a spin out behind Prince!

 

 

And finally, just to prove it just about can, the whole set up by the quarry.

Really interesting and good to see the photos. While I have more experience with the 11-103 and 104 and their successors, rather than the bogie version, I’ve sometimes found that Kato chassis are actually better without too much extra weight in order not to overload them. Though not sure if the extra weight might help them run slower, which actually would be useful for a lot of my Kato-powered locos.

[25kV]

1 hour ago, 009 micro modeller said:

Really interesting and good to see the photos. While I have more experience with the 11-103 and 104 and their successors, rather than the bogie version, I’ve sometimes found that Kato chassis are actually better without too much extra weight in order not to overload them. Though not sure if the extra weight might help them run slower, which actually would be useful for a lot of my Kato-powered locos.

 

Thanks!   The 105 is very lightweight, and was basically just floating - the trailer cars are fairly weighty, so it's not very surprising!.  Seems much happier now though, with a few more g over the powered bogie.

[25kV]

One final view on the test track, just to prove it does actually move under its own power!  😉

 

 

[ColinK]

Brilliant.