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A Works Car for the BTO


steve1

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Whilst at Leigh exhibition the other week, I found a US outline (sort of) coach that I thought wold make an interesting conversion into a Works Car (support coach) for the MoW (PW) section of my imaginary BTO shortline.

 

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First step was to dismantle the thing:

 

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and to get rid of the awful trucks:

 

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I modified the step ends by removing the barrier type things and added textured treadplate plasticard, which doesn't show up well in the pic sadly. I also created a new solid end as I saw this done on a pic of a prototype car. (The other end will stay open and have handrails and a brake wheel in due course):

 

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I blanked out a few windows with thin plasticard:

 

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The next step was to remove the attempt at the truss rods and leave a blank area to detail:

 

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(Apologies for the quality of these pics as I only have a fairly basic camera.)

 

The next step will be adding handrails, underframe details, glazing, a basic interior and a repaint in MoW grey.

 

steve

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Whilst at Leigh exhibition the other week, I found a US outline (sort of) coach that I thought wold make an interesting conversion into a Works Car (support coach) for the MoW (PW) section of my imaginary BTO shortline.

 

The next step will be adding handrails, underframe details, glazing, a basic interior and a repaint in MoW grey.

 

steve

 

Steve, an unusual conversion, will look cool on your layout. Nice to see you bashing something. Those trucks ARE awful, I smiled when I saw them. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with it.

 

Support car, if its for the workers then it would have a smoke stack from the kitchen and discharge outlet pipes near the end of the car to empty the crapper. If your deatiling it under the sill that is.

 

If your choice is a stores/tool vehicle, then fill in just about all the windows, leave three as open -each end and somehwre in the middle but off centre. Add some vertical bars to help keep out the thieves.

 

Btw - coach...? don't ya mean passenger car. :P :P

 

Later, cheers, Tony.

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Btw - coach...? don't ya mean passenger car. :P :P

 

 

Coaches are a type of passenger car, as are combines, dining cars, smokers etc.

 

The trucks weren't very good, but the representation of the truss rods was really bad. LaBelle has reasonable queenposts https://www.labellemodels.com/truss-passenger-queenpost-p-270.html?osCsid=5ncblpvptqe36j3rlts4aph9q0 as does Grandt Line [/url]http://www.grandtline.com/model_railroad/detail%20parts/ho_scale_detail_car_parts_list.htm[/url] and Tichy [/url]http://www.tichytraingroup.com/[/url] Grandt and Tichy also make nice turnbuckles. You're probably better off with the latter two as they are plastic whereas LaBelle is pewter.

 

You might find trucks at http://www.bethlehemcarworks.com/Products/Kit_Bits/index.html#Trucks

 

The original car seemed to be lacking brakes! Tichy has some nice brake parts.

 

As far as the modifications to the car, you can do more or less anything. The Bangor and Aroostook converted several of their old wooden coaches to work cars. There's a nice picture in Passenger Cars of New England vol 2 (Liljestrand and Sweetland, http://www.abebooks.com/products/isbn/9780965770989 of a camp car where all but six of the windows have been covered over (actually, it looks like the car had new siding when converted) and a huge tool locker installed under the car. As far as I can see, the truss rod passed through the locker.

 

Work trains are a good way of having some equipment around from earlier periods.

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Coaches are a type of passenger car, as are combines, dining cars, smokers etc.

 

And I can add to that list, so are charabancs.... :P

 

Cheers, Tony Sissons.

 

 

Highpeak, always good form sign your name to a post. Gives the words one writes some credence...!!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've obtained a very nice set of Central Valley passenger trucks courtesy of johnb. Metals ones with real springs. Nice runners and with some real mass. A big improvement on the originals!

 

BTW thanks to highpeak for those leads. Very handy.

 

steve

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