Brighton belle from Lima Pullman LITS coaches

[BrassMonkey]

Hello Gibbo,

 

Fantastic job! I really like the extra detail. It's great that you can get quality Pullman cars these days so that you can even get the interiors down to a T.

I'm fortunate to own the 2 driving car set by Hornby (a friend managed to source them for me), though the other 3 cars are sadly hard to come by (unless I pay an extortionate price for them). I'm thinking that I'll buy them as I find them or modify some existing Hornby Pullman cars and modify/rename them.

 

It's going to be an interesting build in N, but as others have shown, it can be done. Just a big shame that Arnold aren't producing any more in the near future.

 

BM

[Gibbo675]

Hello Gibbo,

 

Fantastic job! I really like the extra detail. It's great that you can get quality Pullman cars these days so that you can even get the interiors down to a T.

I'm fortunate to own the 2 driving car set by Hornby (a friend managed to source them for me), though the other 3 cars are sadly hard to come by (unless I pay an extortionate price for them). I'm thinking that I'll buy them as I find them or modify some existing Hornby Pullman cars and modify/rename them.

 

It's going to be an interesting build in N, but as others have shown, it can be done. Just a big shame that Arnold aren't producing any more in the near future.

 

BM

Hi BM,

 

I should think having looked on ebay at the Lima N gauge Wagon Lits cars that a cut and shut in the way I went about my Hornby OO should be pretty much feasible.

 

I cut the sides out by scoring the top of the body side just under the gutter with a scalpel and used a razor saw just in from the doors, on some of the coaches you can see a .010" strip making up the kerf of the saw cut. The next step was to rearrange the windows in the required order face down with the bottom edge along a straight edge, I used an aluminium mitre box that had a return on its underside. The rearranged body side and the roof section with vestibule ends and doors was then filled to fit and glued together again using the mitre box as a flat surface. The cabs were adaptations of the coach ends with plasticard.

 

The Pullman cars I used were the ordinary Hornby Triang types R233 Brake and R229 Parlour.

 

You should be able to manage it in N gauge in pretty much the same way, I might have a go myself once all my other stuff is complete.

 

Gibbo.

[BrassMonkey]

Thanks for the advice, Gibbo! I'm looking forward to the cutting and shutting. Many would say it's a "faff", but it's what you have to do to get the effect you want. I'm home tomorrow, so will carry on with the build then.

 

Apologies once again to everyone for bringing up (and possibly hijacking) an old thread.

 

BM

[BernardTPM]

Here's a couple of pictures of the outer and inner cars as rebuilt, plus a Lima Wagon Lits (in Golden Arrow livery) for comparison.

First the outers:

 

 

These use the main part of the cabs, double doors, bogie sideframes and various underside parts of the delPrado model, though the cab was reprofiled (in plan view) and the cab roof built up to match the smoothed Lima roof. One thing missing from the delPrado underframe is the distinctive resistance bank. For these I used parts off the donor (and a few extra) of the underframes of the Lima coach (You should be able to see an adjacent pair of them underneath the 5th window on the unaltered coach in the second picture) attached to a length of styrene dropped down from the floor.

 

Now the middle cars, both sides of the Kitchen Car (the one with power unit at the top). These needed the most rearrangement, easily spotted before painting (hopefully not after). The Parlour Third only needs to loose the LH oval window both sides. Window sliders were simplified to the BB arrangement though I have not attempted to add in the missing ones. In the reverse livery they will be much less apparent than in normal blue/grey.

 

 

All coaches have the sides deepened and shallow solebars added. I will add tables, the supports of which will give rigidity to the currently flimsy floors. These were new, but incorporating the Lima bogie pivots repositioned at the correct centres and the bufferbeams, an added spacer between them.  A clip was left at one end of each floor. Inner bogies are Lima BR1 modified and fitted with Romford 7mm wheels. The underframes from the donor coaches also provided some of the underside details.

[BrassMonkey]

Hi Bernard,

 

That really is an amazing job! What did you do regarding the coach ends, as on the Belle the windows and shape of the ends is slightly angled?

 

Thanks,

BM

[BernardTPM]

I simply removed the WL style boxes, smoothed them and then ignored the difference. With the corridor connections clipped back in place it won't show too much (I hope!). The sides of Belle coaches are slightly angled too, at the waist - the first Tri-ang Pullman was based on the SR electric style Pullman bodywork so has that feature and the angled ends with small oval windows too, but is WAY too short.

[BrassMonkey]

Ok, I'll try that and see if I can modify the original coach bodies instead of using the Worsley etches. They are very close to the Arnold coach bodies after all. I may use the cab ends from the worsley etches however. I'll have a look this evening and see how feasible it is.

 

Thanks,

BM