DavidK71

Earlier this year I made another coach from custom etches. I've always liked the variety of GWR's restaurant and sleeping cars, with myriad diagrams, none of which ever seem to have been made in quantities of more than a few. Presumably those responsible didn't believe in standardization ... anyway, I've always found them interesting. Some years ago I did a Hawksworth J18 sleeping car, which I'm still pleased with, but perhaps its most striking feature is also a problem: the huge six wheel bogies it runs on. They look great, but the coach is definitely curve shy. I've always wanted a GWR sleeping car that would go round a reasonable curve, so looking through Russell's Appendix 2 I settled on W9092, a composite sleeping car built originally as a toplight, renovated in the 1950s, and (rather wastefully) scrapped some time in the early 1960s: As ever, this is based around a Masterclass Models 2mm coach, originally a C32 third. Given that the only photographs of it I could find were in Russell, there are a fair number of guesses in this, especially on the roof. But it's unlikely that there's any more evidence out there! I also made a few mistakes in the etch - those grab handles aren't in quite the right place on the corridor side, despite repeatedly measuring such things. Still, it was a fun experiment. In case anyone is interested, attached is an SVG file giving the etched sides, and also the templates I made for the roof and corridor partition: W9092.svg

I've used cast whitemetal gangways from Etched Pixels, part UM202 from https://www.ultima-models.co.uk/catalogue/comp-ends.html. Someone probably does a 3D printed gangway but I'll use up my stock of the metal ones before looking into that.

Another Masterclass Models kit, this time a C77 corridor third. As ever, a lovely kit, this time made with no modifications. I ran some dilute acrylic grey into the grooves in the sides marking the doors, to better define the doors and suggest a clean, but not entirely pristine coach. I overdid it with the leftmost door on the corridor side, lesson learnt ...

I haven't got any pictures at the moment, but I'll try to describe what I do. I bought a pack of M1.6 x 5mm cheese head screws and bolts, and use these as my bogie pins. This I join to the underframe so that the screw head is inside the coach and the bolt on the outside, with the thread of the screw pointing downwards to fix the bogie onto. I put some glue on the bolt to stop it moving, then fold up the bogie mount and attach that to the underside of the coach so that it fits over the bolt, with the screw thread poking out of it. Depending on the bogie and coach, a bit of spacer material is sometimes needed to make the bogie mount a bit deeper. Next time I do this I'll try to remember to take photographs. I've never had success with stepboards with kits that aren't designed with them in mind. For the Ultima Hawksworths I couldn't find any way to attach them that seemed likely to stay on, so just left them off. The Masterclass Models coaches have slots in the solebars for stepboards to go through, which works very well, but doesn't help you much.

Thanks for the compliment The Masterclass Models coaches do occasionally show up on eBay, so it's worth keeping an eye out there, and now and again someone mentions selling a few on the 2mm Association group (https://groups.io/g/twomm/) I have not tried a coach with a removable roof. I can see that it could be done, but personally I find having the carcass, sides and roof all held together gives a very strong body to which the sides can be easily attached. I suspect that with a removable roof it's harder to make sure that the coach side exactly lines up with the roof all the way along with no gaps, which tend to be very noticeable. But I'm sure it could be done with enough patience. That photograph is rather wonderful! A model of that would look fabulous if it had all the different heights and widths in it.

Yes, the Hawksworths are all the same bodyshell (except for the sleeper), so all you really need is different sides. The Ultima kit comes with an acetate sheet for the internal corridor wall that's different, too: if you ask Alan he may have a spare one for a BCK. I think that the Ultima instructions cover all the Hawksworths. I picked the Hawksworth as I do think it's the easiest of the Ultima ones. The LMS kits are definitely older, and it shows. The Hawksworth has plastic ends and a plastic roof that can be glued together, while the LMS kits have white metal ends and an extruded aluminium roof that needs to be cut to size with a hacksaw and then the join between the ends and the roof sanded and filled if you want it to look good. There's a long thread from me on building some of these kits that you might have come across: https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/38124-building-an-n-gauge-coach-kit/ That starts with an Ultima Hawksworth and includes an Ultima LMS full brake too. The Ultima Pro stuff I've seen looked a little crude I thought, being printed on a not-quote-smooth-enough material that the roof needed quite a bit of work. But Alan did those a few years ago and 3D printing has improved sufficiently rapidly that even a few years on the results are much better than they were.

Hello! It's always good to hear from others experimenting with coach building! The first thing I'd say is that it's never going to be that easy to build a 2mm/N coach, compared to (say) the N Gauge Society wagon kits, or a commercially available plastic injection kit. Whatever you end up building, you're probably going to have to get bits from other producers, and do some experimentation to find what works for you. There just isn't the market to support making complete kits that come with everything you might need. Of the producers you list, Etched Pixels / Ultima are definitely easier in that Alan has made an effort to provide as much as he can, along with instructions. That said, how easy they are to build is variable, depending on the origin of the kit. For example, the older Ultima kits are usually a bit more difficult with having to do things like cut the roof to the right length. Worsley Works and BH Enterprises are both more "scratch aids", i.e. you get some parts but no instructions, and have to figure the rest out yourself. The best coach kits I've ever worked with are Chris Higgs' Masterclass Models coaches, but these were limited runs and are not now available. They do turn up occasionally on eBay, though. As for 3D printing, well, several people have produced impressive results, but I've never seen a 3D printed model of a steel-sided coach in N/2mm that looked as good as etched sides. For wooden bodied coaches like Gresleys it's definitely a viable technology, but the stepping effect of printing doesn't seem to be there yet for smooth sided steel coaches. The best results going forward are likely to be etched sides with everything else 3D printed, but I don't know of anyone producing kits like that. I don't have experience of every one of those coaches you list, but I'd say that the easiest to build of them would be the Etched Pixels / Ultima GWR Hawksworth brake composite: you can get all the parts, including the roof, the only other things you would need to acquire would be paint and decals for the lining and numbering. The open questions you list: Forming sides isn't particularly difficult. All you need is something like a brass rod to bend the coach side over. It's a bit scary the first time, but once you've got the hang of it it is easy enough. I don't think it makes any difference. Representations of corridor connectors are simple enough to glue on, and generally etched sides will have the positions of holes for handles etc. already marked. Lining using decals from Fox Transfers is a bit fiddly, and the lining is always going to be overscale for N/2mm, but it just takes patience and practice. That is in the eye of the beholder! I do think N and 2mm coaches next to each other are noticeably a different size, and commercial coaches do look different from kit built ones - notably the windows are never as good in commercial coaches, as they are plastic inserts, while etched coach kits let you use thin glazing on thin sizes which always looks better.

It's good to hear that the file is of some interest. I tried to follow how Chris Higgs (Masterclass Models) had done etches, as his are the best kits I've come across. Yes, I used PPD: it was very straight-forward, I emailed them the file and a few weeks later the etches turned up.

I finished this a few months back, but have only today got round to photographing it: This is W7573, which began its life as an E88 Toplight, but was given a new body during World War II by Swindon after sustaining severe damage. Definitely an interesting coach with its old underframe with Fishbelly bogies and tie bars, a corridor side that looks like late 1930s Sunshine stock, and a door to every compartment on the compartment side, in the style of older 1920s and 30s coaches. Creating my own etches was an interesting challenge! I definitely made a few mistakes, but overall I'm very pleased with the result. In case anyone else fancies one of these, I'm attaching an SVG file (generated with Inkscape) containing the etched sides and cosmetic solebar, plus the corridor partition and roof guide. W7573.svg

Just a little bit more progress, the coach now has an interior: When designing the etched sides, one thing I didn't do was to design an etched corridor wall for the interior. When I got to thinking about the interior, I came to regret that! My eventual solution was to work out what I wanted for the corridor using Inkscape and testing with paper, based on the coach sides. The actual corridor is a piece of an A4 transparency sheet, cut to size, which I then blutac'd to a piece of paper with the corridor design on and carefully painted the corridor onto it. Compartment walls are pieces of plasticard sheet with some plasticard rod at the bottom to hold them upright. Seats are just printed paper with a vaguely appropriate moquette pattern, cut and folded then glued in. It's all pretty basic but fine for N gauge - corridor coaches need some interior, otherwise the light shining through is too obvious, but I can't see any point in any more detail than this.

It's always good to see built coach kits here.

You're right, once an etch has been processed, it's cheaper to run off further copies of it. Given the small size of N gauge etches, though, I suspect that it's not that much cheaper. Actually producing the artwork doesn't require much computer knowledge, just a tool like Inkscape and a lot of persistence. The effort is much more in deciding what the etch should look like, rather than making the computer represent what you intend.

It felt like time to post the current work-in-progress, although progress at the moment is rather slow! Apologies for the less than stellar photography, but I was in a rush. Anyway, what we currently have is this: This started out as one of Chris Higgs' Masterclass GWR coaches, a C32 toplight third. The underframe was built up pretty much as standard, and is running on Fishbelly bogies from the 2mm Association with N gauge wheelsets. However the body has etches of my own design to represent W7573, which started life in 1912 as an E88 toplight composite. It was badly damaged during the Second World War so Swindon re-used the underframe with a new body to a custom design that approximately matches Swindon's immediate pre-war coaches. There are photographs of both sides of the rebuilt W7573 in Russel's Great Western Coaches Appendix, Volume 1, so I scanned the relevant pages and used a plug-in for Paint.NET to approximately correct for the effect of perspective. I then made some guesses as to the sizes of compartments and windows and drew up the sides in Inkscape, then got PPD to etch the sides and foot-steps in 0.2mm nickel silver. Having not done this before I was very pleased when the sides matched the rest of the coach! (They're just held on with blutac in the photograph for alignment purposes.)

Those are lovely, well done! Always good to see some Masterclass Models kits built up - there have been a few posts of Great Western coaches, but fewer LMS, and I don't think I've ever seen any Southern ones that Chris did. (Not that I can talk, with a production rate of rather less than one a year...)

Indeed, but I do think that that self-help is so much easier than it once was. With 3d-printing and etching possible from 2d vector artwork much can be done.