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Ian Simpson

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  1. Ian Simpson
    In the late 1830s & early 1840s railway carriages rapidly replaced stage coaches for long journeys. Trust Nigel Hill to reverse the trend by changing a railway carriage into a horse-drawn coach! 
     

     
    He took a Bachmann 1830s Baltimore and Ohio carriage from the de Witt Clinton set and separated the metal body from its plastic chassis. Attaching white metal cart wheels from Langley Models with superglue turned the carriage body into a reasonable representation of an early 19th century stage coach:
     

     
    His ingenuity didn't stop there, because he then took the carriage chassis and added planked plasticard to make an 1830s flat wagon:
     

     

     

     
    (The figures in the photos are from Modelu's "Ragged Victorians" range.)
     

  2. Ian Simpson
    A couple of years ago I started using PECO 009 hook-and-loop couplers, as the buffer beams on 1840s models are much lower than the beams on more modern stock and the usual 00/H0 solutions don't work. Gluing the plastic shafts of PECO GR-101 couplers to the bottom of the beams worked okay,  but I decided to try a more organised approach to  coupling and uncoupling stock.  I recently read that the 009 Society recommends setting narrow gauge couplers 6 mm above rail height, and I decided to experiment with this as a guideline.
     
    I found that PECO's GR-103 NEM brackets set the couplers at exactly the right height when they are glued to the underside of the Bachmann Prussia coaches. 
     

     
    The height gauge in the photo below (made from 2 mm square strips of white plasticard) shows how the coupler hooks are 6 mm above rail height when PECO's GR-102 couplers are plugged into the NEM brackets:
     

     
    I didn't use the plastic hooks provided with these GR-102 couplers, because I wanted to use magnetic uncoupling. (Although it is possible to adapt them for magnetic uncoupling by gluing a piece of iron to the plastic dropper, I wanted the couplers to survive rough handling and exhibition conditions.) Instead I used the iron wire hooks supplied with PECO's GR-101 couplers, which swing around and uncouple nicely when they run over strong-but-tiny Neodymium disc magnets glued to the track sleepers: 
     

     

     
    As a bonus, I found that a Poundland magnetic pick-up tool works as an uncoupling tool, allowing easy hand-in-the-sky uncoupling anywhere on the layout:
     

     
    It was the thought of exhibiting Tinories at the Wealden Railway Group's Steyning Exhibition on 10th March with dodgy couplers that made decide to improve the stock. So my next task it to bash some Bachmann Prussia carriages into some interesting carriages for the exhibition:
     



  3. Ian Simpson

    A Stephenson-ish Single

    By Ian Simpson,


    1840s locomotives
    The iconic British locomotive design (and the most common one) in the early 1840s was the 2-2-2 inside-cylinder tender loco. Each builder had their own unique features, but the general outline didn't vary too much across UK companies. This post gives some suggestions on ways to use the Dapol (ex-Airfix) Rocket kit to produce a generic single.
     
    The model was built by Nigel Hill, who unfortunately isn't on RMWeb. There's still some work needed, especially fitting outside frames and handrails around the footplate:
     

     
    Nigel used 0.0040 inch thick styrene sheet to make the chassis, using the hornblocks (I think that's what they are called) from the Dapol kit to hold the axles  in place. A strip of stiff card around 60 mm by 14 mm wide would be suitable for the main chassis, although Nigel's chassis was a bit wider, which meant he had to cut out notches for the wheels. Hopefully the photo below shows the arrangement for the axles: the middle blocks are glued flush with the top side of the sheet (he cut additional notches in the chassis strip to allow this), while the blocks that take the carrying wheels are glued to a couple of pieces of 0.0040" card between the carrying wheels' axle blocks and the chassis strip to get the right height:
     

     
    He used the Dapol Rocket drivers and tender wheels for the chassis, although in the photos I've replaced the carrying wheels with Gibson wheel sets (and may replace the drivers as well) to make the wheels more free-running. The loco is powered from the tender by a Bachmann deWitt Clinton tender drive unit with the Rocket tender sides fixed to it.  One easy tweak to the driving wheels is to trim out the little piece of plastic that holds the crank pin, as there won't be a coupling rod:
     
    Nigel then used a piece of planked plastic card to build an upper layer that acts as the footplate, adding splashers made from strips of thinner plasticard. He didn't get around to fitting outside frames, and I haven't done this yet myself.  I think I might be able to use strips of plasticard for the outside frames (edit: now described in the comments thread below, at post 5), and cut-down pieces of Ratio GWR-style "spear" fencing for the rails around the footplate.
     

     
    The boiler comes from the Rocket kit, but Nigel built his own smokebox and firebox from plasticard.  Alternatively the Dapol firebox can be trimmed from the Rocket's boiler (it's moulded onto the boiler parts, but sits too low for an 1840s design) and then glued back on at the right height. I used a Dapol kit butchered in this way to make the stationery engine below:
     

     
  4. Ian Simpson
    I always said that my micro-terminus was an experiment - and the whole point of an experiment is to learn lessons. I quickly realised that my layout had two major faults:
    (a) the foamcore baseboard was so light (250 grams including rails and fittings) that I had to put a finger on top of it every time I changed a point to prevent it moving about on the tabletop, and
    (b) the traverser, driven by a rod under the baseboard, suffered a bit from friction and it often needed some finger-poking to get the rails to join up accurately with the rest of the track.
    There was also a minor irritation that the wiring, point controls, etc were all underneath the board, so that the layout had to be turned over to work on them. This wasn't a problem when the layout was being built, but it did become inconvenient when I added some rudimentary scenery.
    So when I found a piece of wood 50 cms by 15 cms that weighed a hefty kilogram, it seemed a fine opportunity to build a replacement layout (in foreground below, with original layout at rear):
     

     
    This time I started with the traverser, rather than leaving it to the end of the track-laying process, because I had learned the hard way how essential its smooth operation is for the track design.
     
    I made a 12 cm base for the traverser from a couple of freebie plastic Lottery cards (after checking that the smooth plastic coating of the cards did run smoothly over the surface of the wood). The paper envelope shown in the photo below provides a covering surface for the top of the traverser, while the base (which glides over the wooden baseboard) is left as the smooth plastic coating advertising the lottery:
     

     
    A length of PECO flexitrack glued on top gave the traverser base a bit of rigidity, and I added sides from wooden coffee stirrers mainly for cosmetic effect:
     

     

     
    I also used the coffee stirrers to make guide rails for the traverser along each side, and when the connecting track was laid I put strips of stirrer at the front and back to make sure the traverser stops in the right place:
     

     
    A copper rod (actually Mercontrol tubing) is used to operate the traverser from the back of the layout. Since the traverser only rests loosely on top of the board (hence the guide rails) it can be easily operated from the front of the layout with a finger tip.
    Points are operated by stiff copper wire above the board. The wire and the plastic brackets I used came from PECO's 009 uncoupler kits, but similar homemade brackets could easily be made:
     

     
    Electrically, block connectors and PECO pre-soldered fishplates cater for my Can't Solder, Won't Solder phobia.   
    So far I'm very pleased with the second attempt. It seems to work well and it was cheap to build. The next stage will be a bit of scenery ...
     
    *  Note for overseas readers: when British politicians are caught doing something especially deplorable they always say "I can assure the House that no wrong-doing was intended, and that lessons have been learned". This mantra is seen as an acceptable alternative to actually learning anything or trying to do things any better in future.
  5. Ian Simpson
    Working couplers can be a problem for early stock, as most commercial couplers are designed for the larger vehicles that developed later in the 19th century. Funnily enough, deciding on a coupler was one of the biggest challenges I found when I started modelling the 1840s, which is why I thought a separate post on the subject might be useful.
     
    Most British HO modellers use Kadee couplers. They are robust, very reliable and they make shunting an absolute pleasure. But the HO couplers are designed for 20th / 21st century stock, and the ferrous pins (designed to separate the couplers when they pass over the magnetic uncoupler) do tend to catch on point blades if they have been fitted to the lower headstocks / buffer beams of the smaller 1840s stock.
     
    Kadee makes 2 mm couplers, and a long shank 2 mm Kadee coupler might work with the Bachmann locos and coaches. But I decided to use DG 2mm couplers instead, and I'm very pleased with them. I think they are unobtrusive and they work a treat, as well as being excellent value.
     


    DG couplers are normally supplied as a make-it-up-yourself set, with a fold-up brass fret plus a length of wire to create the loop and the arms that are engaged by the magnet. I was able to get some ready-made couplers, and I'm not sure I would have dared to try them otherwise. But actually they're not too difficult to build.
     
    I decided to use one-directional couplers – in other words, the full loop-and-hook at one end of the wagon, but just the bare hook at the other end. It means sacrificing some of the auto-coupling features, but this was an experiment and I like to keep any moving parts as simple as possible. So I bought ready-made couplers for the full loop-and-hook couplers, and a separate kit for the stand-alone hooks.

     
    The basic hooks are very easy to make up: just cut them out of the fret and bend the end of each coupler so that the hook on the top of the coupler is facing slightly backwards (i.e. towards the body of the wagon) to catch the loop of the full coupler. All that is needed for the Norris loco is to trim down or remove the thin plastic pin that has been moulded on the tender, designed to hold the coupling bar from the Bachmann coach.

     
    Then the flat plate of the B&G hook is simply glued to the bottom of the tender, resting on the plastic housing that surrounds the moulded pin. (I left the brass hook unpainted in this exercise so that it would show up a bit more prominently in the photos - but I will paint it matt black eventually...)

     
    Fitting the full coupler to the front of the Prussia coach is just as easy. Simply undo the small cross-headed screw and remove the plastic connecting bar, then glue the flat plate to the bottom of the coach beneath the buffer beam.

     

     
    Despite being designed for 2mm stock, these couplers work very well, and I suspect they could be used with early-Victorian 4mm models as well. Given their small size I was surprised to find the turning circle that they give is rather more generous than I need, so in future I will glue then slightly further back under the buffer beams.

     
    I use 2mm B&B magnets for the uncouplers. These are small enough to fit unobtrusively between the rails of PECO OO/HO track if the sleepers are slightly opened out.

     
    How to hide the magnet? At this point, I have to admit that even I think my chosen solution for ballasting the layout is a bit dodgy. Poundland sell a pack of sandpaper in mixed grades for, well, for £1, as it happens. The backing paper on the sheets is very thin; not great for DIY work but so thin it's ideal if you want to lay it over the sleepers of your track! So I've shaken and vacuumed off as many loose grains as I can, spread a few coats of matt varnish over the sheets to hold the rest in place, and cut out strips of the treated sandpaper to act as over-the-sleeper ballast.

     
    BTW the unpainted figures in this photo are a new range of 1850s figures from Andrew Stadden. Fashionistas might notice that the skirts worn by the more upper-class women are slightly fuller than one would have seen in 1840, but otherwise these are ideal for the period. Andrew also sells these figures in 4mm.
     
    And the bollards on the edge of the platform are for rope shunting, but that's a post for another day.


  6. Ian Simpson
    In addition to the Norris 4-2-0, Bachmann produced models of two other early US locomotives, the De Witt Clinton and the John Bull. Unlike the Norris loco, both these models have tender drives. Second-hand models frequently turn up at affordable prices on eBay (affordable, of course, if you don't have to use the US postal service ).
     
    The De Witt Clinton was built by New York's West Point Foundry, running intermittently on the Mohawk and Hudson Rail Road during 1831-32 before it was broken up as a failure. I can only assume Bachmann decided to model it because it was the first locomotive to work in New York state.
     
    Despite the prototype's shortcomings, the model itself is decidedly cute. Small and primitive in design, it is ideal for any 1820s/1830s industrial setting (quarry, coal mine, early gasworks, canal feeder, etc) or a freelance local line.
     
    Personally I think the De Witt Clinton is worth buying just for its powered tender, which is the smallest 16.5 mm gauge power unit I've ever seen. (Actually Bachmann's Gandy Dancer is even smaller, and it was used by Andy Young as the tender drive for his model of Locomotion. But its tiny disc wheels make it less suitable for conversions.)

     
    The distinctive yellow Clinton tender body is plastic and it can be easily prised from its metal chassis with a small screwdriver, revealing a four-wheel power unit that is just 25 mms long with a wheelbase of 16 mms.


     
    Malcolm Carlsson realised this wheelbase exactly matches the tender from Dapol's OO Rocket kit. He trimmed the tender down to HO proportions (but failed to give any details; I suspect he merely filed homeopathic quantities of plastic from the top of the tender to salve his conscience), extended the chimney slightly and added buffers before writing up the conversion for the July 1983 issue of Scale Trains.
     
    The photos below illustrate my take on his tender conversion. I used Blutack to temporarily hold the body in place for the photos; this worked okay, and I suspect this could even be a long-term fix if you take a bit more care than I did to place the blobs where they won't show. You could also cover the sides with paper to produce the smooth tender sides that became fashionable a few years later, or simply build a flat-sided tender from plastic card or cardboard.

     
    The photos below show the loco and Dapol tender with a couple of cut-down Smallbrook Studios cauldron waggons, perfect for any layout where the train can trundle across a bleak Northern or Cornish moor. Peter Seviour's Pockerley Wagon Way shows early scenic layouts don't have to be large to be attractive!


    --------
     

    The John Bull locomotive was built by Robert Stephenson at Newcastle in 1831 for the Camden & Amboy Railroad. He didn't include a tender so the local engineers built their own, which was basically a shed on wheels to carry wood and water. (New England didn't have much coal, but it did have an awful lot of trees and a hunger for newly-cleared land.) The leading bogie with its prominent cow-catcher was added the following year to help the loco navigate the railroad's sharp curves. Later in its life it also received a cab and a large smoke-stack chimney.

     
    Removing the bogie and other American features such as the large headlamp and the bell produces a loco similar to Stephenson's “Samson” class goods locomotive, and it could also be converted to a Stephenson “Planet” 2-2-0 by replacing the front wheelset. But John Bull's haystack firebox is not typical of the locos that Stephenson built for British railways - it could be replaced fairly easily with a more traditional firebox top made from card or thin plasticard.
     
    The tender can't be converted to an Anglicised version without an incredible amount of work, because the motor fills the complete tender up to roof level. It would be much easier to build a replacement British-style tender (perhaps using the Dapol kit?) and then convert the John Bull's tender to a primitive van that can run immediately behind the replacement tender. In fact, turning the tender through 180 degrees makes it look rather like an early brake van (although that over-hanging bit of roof, now at the rear, will still have to go). The tender is sitting a bit high in the photo below because I used the OO wheels supplied with the Dapol kit, instead of using smaller 10.5 mm diameter HO wheels. BTW the train in the photos below, including the 5 and 9 Models wagons behind the van, is exactly 12 inches / 30 cms long.
     

     
    Or I guess you could always model the St Etienne and Lyon Railway, where at least one of the locos had a similar tender...

     
    For more information on all the prototypes modelled by Bachmann plus other fascinating early American locos, I recommend Smith H Oliver's The First Quarter-Century of Steam Locomotives in North America, free to read or download at www.gutenberg.org/files/51976/51976-h/51976-h.htm
     
    Special thanks to Nigel Hill for drawing my attention to Malcolm Carlsson's article, and for all his support and advice. And for Nigel's own suggestions on the John Bull tender see this blog entry.
     
    Update 3/4/18: the Bachmann webpage that held service sheets for these locos doesn't seem to be working properly. As a result I have copied the diagrams from these two sheets below for reference so that modellers can see how the parts fit together:
     

     



  7. Ian Simpson
    A few of my reasons for modelling 1840s railways in HO:

    1. I like microlayouts! In the early 1840s most trains were short (many mainline trains only had four carriages at this time, and even that could be a strain for some of the low-powered locos). And an HO layout takes up just three-quarters of the area of an equivalent OO layout, which helps as well. The photo for this post shows my attempt to answer that age-old question "Can you build a station on an A4-size baseboard?" The mock-up suggests the answer is yes, if the footprint is 23 x 4 inchs and you use a traverser at one end. So anyone with a 48 x 12 board can really let rip!
     


    2. There's some stock available. In the photo I've used the Bachmann 4-2-0 Norris locos (the prototypes were used on the Birmingham & Gloucester, Aberdare and Taff Valley Railways and then sold on to collieries, contractors etc in the 1850s) to test clearances. The coaches are also by Bachmann (the "Prussia" coach from the Potsdam Railway: broadly similar to British coaches of the time, but if there's interest I'd add a post on how to Anglicise them). The figure are by Preiser, who also make nice horse-drawn carriages and carts for the period,

    3. Track is easy, especially if you aren't a rivet counter. Most early railways used versions of flat-bottomed rail, so I've used Peco streamline points in my mock-up. Sleepers are likely to be completely hidden in this period as ballast was usually laid above the tops of the sleepers, which does open up new approaches to ballasting. Much to my initial surprise the short wheelbase Norris locos will run over a series of three small radius Streamline points in succession without a hiccup.

    4. Early locos had low-slung boilers (due to the pioneer engineers' concerns about stability), and this gives them a rather "broad-gauge" appearance when viewed from the front. As a result OO models of early locos can look a bit top-heavy, even to someone with my coarse-scale eyesight. However HO has the advantage of true scale distance between the rails, so that the locos and coaches match the proportions seen in early lithographs and photos.
     
    5. I like the challenge of modelling early railways (although there's actually a lot of info available if you're into historical research), and I like the challenge of modelling more modern British railways in HO as well. In both cases you need to use a bit of ingenuity and you will learn to appreciate anything that can be pressed into service. Combine the challenge of a minority scale (for British modellers) and a minority era, and you need never be bored again!
     
    And why am I trying to fit a station on a piece of foamcard 23 by 4 inches? I just fancied a station and fiddle yard that would fit on a desktop!

  8. Ian Simpson

    Building the Traverser

    By Ian Simpson,


    1840s track
    In the early 1840s architects, engineers and managers were still grappling with the problems thrown up by a new technology that could pick up, transport and deliver hundreds of passengers at the same time. As a result early station track plans often look cumbersome with their long rows of wagon turntables, their separate platforms for arrivals and departures and their rows of carriage sidings crammed in between the platforms.
     
    One early problem for the engineers was moving locomotives from one end of the train to the other at a terminus. Crossover points at the end of the line would have taken up valuable space in the small stations of the time. At some termini the problem was solved by uncoupling the locomotive at the entrance to the station and then rope-hauling the carriages into the platform before the loco ran in after them. At other stations a turntable, a section plate or a traverser was used to move locos (and sometimes coaches) between tracks inside the station so that they could run around their trains.
     

     
    On a previous layout I built a satisfactory turntable on a CD disc with very basic electrics - simply a wire soldiered to each rail, with enough play to allow the turntable to be rotated through 180 degrees by one of my trusty coffee-stirrer rods. But a turntable would not fit onto my current layout (early locos plus their tenders are around five inches long in HO, and my baseboard is only four inches wide). So I decided to build a traverser instead.
     
    The bed of the traverser was easily built from lottery cards: they are rigid and easy to work, but because a card is only 8 cms wide and I needed a traverser 12 cms long to take the Norris loco I used three overlapping layers to produce a sturdy, reasonably heavy bed 2.25 mms deep.
     

     
    I used four lengths of Peco Code 75 flat-bottomed rail for the runners supporting the traverser, and recycled some of the sleepers from the flexitrack as guides stuck beneath the traverser to keep it in place as it slides along the rails. As with my points, a long pin through the centre of the traverser connects with a coffee stirrer rod beneath the surface, allowing it to be slid between the two tracks by pulling and pushing the stirrer. The groove cut in the foamcore to allow the pin to move also acts as a stop when the traverser is in place at each end of its run. Lead tape (used by golfers to adjust the balance of their clubs, but also ideal for adding weight to rolling stock) provides extra weight on the underside of the traverser.
     

     
    I did mess things up a bit when it came to powering the traverser. My first thought was to run the power through the supporting rails, with copper strips resting above them on the underside of the traverser to pick up the current and feed it to the track. I still think that should work well, but I decided connecting the track on the traverser directly to the controller was a simpler solution which meant I wouldn’t have to keep cleaning the supporting rails all the time.
     
    My soldering is barely adequate on a good day, and I wanted to make sure the wires to the track were strong enough to cope with any stresses and strains as the traverser slides backwards and forward. I had planned to investigate ready-soldered fishplates for some time, so building the traverser gave me a good reason to buy a pack of Peco's PL-81 pre-wired fishplates. So far I'm very impressed and I can't see myself trying to solder a wire to a length of rail again in a hurry!
     
    But then I decided to be clever and run the two wires horizontally under the traverser and into a groove cut into the baseboard at an angle. It works now, but the friction of the wires dragging on the underside of the baseboard meant I had to hack chunks out of the foamcore beneath the board to allow the wires sufficient play. In retrospect it would have been easier to simply drop the wires vertically down into a groove directly beneath the traverser bed to keep friction to a minimum.
     

     
    My next job is to build a platform to sit between the tracks, and also to add some sort of backscene. But my next post will probably be my long-promised blog on altering the Bachmann Prussia coach. I have been doing some work on this, as the photo below shows. (BTW the north-eastern style cauldron wagons in the foreground are Smallbrook Studio's 4 mm model, adapted for HO scale by removing the top plank and replacing the 12 mm wheels supplied with the model with 10.5 mm ones.)
     

     
    UPDATE (May 2020): For a simpler (and I think think a more reliable) design for a locomotive traverser, see my post "... lessons have been learned".



  9. Ian Simpson

    Growing Pains

    By Ian Simpson,


    1840s station
    As locos grew more powerful and trains grew longer, most early railways quickly outgrew their original terminus stations. Those stations that couldn't be expanded tended to be down-graded to good depots as new stations were built nearby. So it's no surprise that the Grand Middenshire Trunk is also building itself a new branch terminus:
     

     
     
    The baseboard is a piece of 6 mm MDF, labouriously cut to size using a Stanley knife and steel rule, with thin wood bracing beneath due of the horror stories I've heard about MDF sagging under its own weight. The size is 32 inches x 6 inches, which is just narrow enough to use long coffee stirrers to operate the points and signals. These rods lie on top of the baseboard, but are effectively "buried" in the layer of cork sheet glued between the baseboard and the track.
     
    Track is PECO Code 75 Streamline with electrofrog points. Despite the mishmash of wiring at the back of the baseboard (below), the whole station is a single electric section with insulated fish plates protecting facing points from short circuits and pre-soldered fish plates providing power at the rear ("toe"?) of every point. This means I can isolate the two outside sidings just by setting the point blades towards the central track.
     

     
    The board includes a fiddleyard (below), which is simply a single cartridge that slides into place and has power supplied by a couple of crocodile clips. The cartridges are just strips of thick plasticard of the same thickness as the cork underlay. The biggest scenic challenge is how to disguise this unrailwaylike feature.
     

     
    To do this I've built a modest goods depot to sit in front of the fiddle yard. The centrepiece is made from a Bilteezi LSWR goods depot, scanned and shrunk to 3.5 mm scale and chopped about in a photo-editing programme (although the traditional sharp blade on a printed sheet of card would work as well). I added some Langley architectural mouldings and strips of plasticard to give the facade a bit of depth, and made a plasticard tiled roof that would jut partly over the cartridge. The wall to the right (which is a bit bland, and needs something like a large advert to break it up) is just a sheet of plastic card with 3 mm scale brickwork.
     

     
    Oh, and as if one uncompleted layout wasn't enough, there's also the 00/HOn9 Lough Down and Long Covid Light Railway quayside scene to be built:
     
     

     
    Those coaches are actually 3D prints of Victorian EMUs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volk's_Electric_Railway
     
    Brighton's Volk's Electric Railway is of course famous for its customer care and good public relations:
     
     
     
     
  10. Ian Simpson

    1840 wagon kits by 5&9 Models

    By Ian Simpson,


    1840s wagon
    Chris Cox has recently been working on easy-to-build 4 mm whitemetal kits of some of the small and distinctive wagons of the early 1840s, as well as his better-known kits for the LBSCR. He has produced masters for three Birmingham and Gloucester Railway wagons (ballast, mineral and a fascinating general goods wagon with slatted sides), as well as two early London and Birmingham Railway wagons. He was kind enough to send me samples to build, and they are all very impressive.
     
    The first thing to say is that they have been designed to be as easy as possible to assemble. The BGR wagons and the small LBR wagon all have the axle boxes moulded onto the side, so that building the kit is essentially a matter of fitting the two ends and the two sides together to form the chassis. Chris has even added clever notches along the sides that hold the ends in place (although a set square is still needed to ensure the parts really are set at right angles).

    The photo above shows the small London and Birmingham wagon under construction. Yes, the wagons really are just two inches long, so one can produce a very impressive freight train in say eighteeen inches! (The Birmingham and Gloucester was an important freight line linking the workshops of Birmingham with the ports of Gloucester and Bristol, but the steep Lickey Incline meant the goods trains were still limited to a maximum of around 15 wagons.)
     


    The Birmingham and Gloucester wagons have the ends cast with the buffer beams, with the sides added to the chassis after it has been built up. The model supported on the paper pad and pile of plastic cards in the photo above is the B&GR general goods wagon. The models on the left are the small L&BR wagon and, in front of it, the B&GR ballast wagon that is still waiting to have the sides added. The kits do not have floors, so I used my usual Lottery plasticard with a ready-scribed veneer of plasticard on top. (In the photo I used 1mm planking - it should have been 2 mm!)

    I used my usual Poundland superglue to assemble the kits, and found that it only worked on the white metal if I first primed the surfaces to be stuck with a thin coat of superglue and allowed it to dry before adding a second layer and joining the parts. Holding the pieces in place for half a minute was enough to start the setting process, although I would suggest leaving any super-glued joint for at least an hour before moving it.]

    For OO modellers, I found Bachmann 12 mm spoked wheels are ideal for the kits. Chris included pin-point bearings with the kits, which fit into the holes in the axle boxes to produce very free-running models. Since I'm modelling in 3.5 mm I used Alan Gibson's 10.5 mm wheels instead (4 mm modellers use these for Lowmacs). Because they are small models (only 5 cms long) and relatively narrow, they don't look over-scale next to Bachmann's HO Norris loco (photo above).

    These were all well-designed, easy-to-construct kits that I really enjoyed building. I finished by painting the Birmingham & Gloucester wagons with Humbrol Brick Red paint - no one really knows the B&GR goods livery, but it may have been a red-brown colour. The London & Birmingham wagons were probably painted light grey. (In 1840 few if any railways put their name or initials on the sides of their wagons - usually a wagon plate was the only proof of ownership.) There's a couple of excellent photos that show Chris's own painting of the wagons on his blog.
     

     
    So it is now possible to model an early British railway, the Birmingham and Gloucester, without scratch-building! And that seems even more unlikely than Leicester City winning the Premiership or the US electing a reality TV star as president ...
     
    BTW, if people aren't familar with the lottery cards they look like this:

    One thing I have found useful is to use a map pin for marking out lines to cut on the card, rather than a pencil: the point of the pin is thinner and allows a bit more accuracy than even a sharp pencil line. I make a small hole on the surface of the plastic roughly every 1 cm / half inch, then I just cut along the dotted line:

     





  11. Ian Simpson
    In a previous post I discussed my difficulties finding a suitable auto-coupler for early HO stock, and how I discovered DG magnetic couplers. They are excellent couplers: cheap, unobtrusive, effective. But I was very aware that any coupler that requires a jig to make it up didn't really meet my KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) criterion.
     
    I'd often wondered about using PECO OO9 couplers, which have a hook-and-loop design similar to some continental couplers. I finally decided to buy a couple of packs of PECO's GR-102 couplers and experiment with them. 
     
    They arrived today and I was impressed with both the simple design and the crisp moulding of the plastic. Each coupler comes in two parts that just snap together: a plastic hook, and a plastic loop with a dropper on each side which is raised when the coupler passes over a Hornby-style uncoupling ramp.
     

     
    Having made a couple of sets of the couplers up, I'm sure they would work very well with an uncoupling ramp. The design appears as effective and robust as it is simple. But being completely plastic, they obviously wouldn't be any use for magnetic uncoupling.  Unless ...
     
    My eye fell on a discarded staple lying on the desk. Well, sometime untidiness is the real mother of invention.
     
    I cut around 6 mm from the middle of the staple using kitchen scissors and superglued it to the outside of one of the droppers. The photo below isn't great, but  the greyish bar on the right-hand coupler is the piece of staple. 
     

     
    Moving the converted coupler near a magnet caused the loop to rise up just as the DG coupler loops do.
     

     
    I daresay narrow gauge modellers have known about this wheeze for years, but I was certainly delighted to have found such a cheap, quick and simple way to convert the PECO couplers to magnetic operation. I know the massive magnet in the photos makes it look as if I set my experiment up to succeed, but I have also tested the hack on smaller magnets and I've found it works with micro-magnets as well. 
     
  12. Ian Simpson

    Anglicising Bachmann coaches (part 1)

    By Ian Simpson,


    1840s coach
    Apologies, I realise this is quite a long post! And it doesn't finish here, either: there's a second part that I will post in a week or so. But I thought I would try and give as much info as I could about my attempts to use the Bachmann Prussia coach to produce a more representative British carriage of the early 1840s.
     
    1) What are we working with?
     
    The Prussia coach is a nice model moulded in green plastic with yellow window frames and brown door panels printed (I think) onto the body. If you dislike the sheen to the plastic, it can easily be toned down with a coat of matt varnish (or a weathering wash, I suppose, although early carriages seem to have been kept pretty clean from all accounts). If you decide to paint the body another colour, I include a few tips on painting later in the post.

     
     
    The length of the body is 58 mm. In 1/87 scale this represents 16 feet 7 inches, a typical length for coaches of the early 1840s. (The length over the buffers is 66 mm.)
     
    The width of the body at the widest point (over the windows) is 28 mm. This scales out at 8 feet in HO, which makes it rather wider than an average coach of the time. Loading gauges varied considerably at this time, but most British railways used carriages between 6 feet 6 inches and 8 feet wide. In addition there is quite a significant curve to the sides of the coach, with the sides tapering inwards below the windows.
    Edited 13/2/22: In fact they look rather like the Grand Junction Railway's First and Mail carriages in Francis Whishaw's 1840 The Railways of Great Britain and Ireland (available as a free downlaod on Google Books):
     
     
    It would be possible to narrow down the model by removing a vertical strip of plastic from each end of the body (which would mean you would also need to trim the seating unit inside). Achieving flat sides would involve a degree of scratch building: not impossible, but you might as well scratch-build an entire new coach to suit your own requirements.
     
    Personally I’m happy to leave the width and the tapering sides as they are, since the south-eastern railways of the early 1840s tended to have generous loading gauges and rather characterful little coaches. In addition I like the slightly broad-gauge appearance of these low, wide coaches and I think it adds to their charm. However, if I was modelling the London and Birmingham or the Liverpool and Manchester in the 1830s I think I might decide it was too much effort to turn them into the narrow flat-edged coaches common in these very early years, and I might decide to use a different model as a base.
     
    (Of course, if you are modelling in 4mm scale the width is a bit of a bonus: unlike most HO rolling stock, the Prussia coach won’t seem too thin! At just 38 mm high from rail tops to the lamps on the roof it might seem a bit low for 4mm, but some early railways did have some coaches that seem incredibly low by modern standards (and there are several visual tricks to increase apparent height such as placing baggage on the roof.)
     
    The ideas below are simply my own suggestions. You don’t need to follow any of them unless they appeal to you. The coaches are very nice, attractive models as they are and they will give a delightful period flavour to a layout. But they do provide such a convenient base for adaptations and tweaks that they almost call out to be bashed to meet modellers’ individual tastes and requirements.
     
    2) Dismantling the coach body
     
    Most of my suggestions, such as fitting new running boards, do not require any dismantling of the model. In fact it is really only necessary to take the model apart if you want to repaint the window frames (because dismantling the coach lets you remove the glazing inside) or you want to change the roof.
     
    It is easy to dismantle the coaches. There are two small crosshead screws on the underside of the model, visible near the wheel sets on the left-hand coach in the photograph below. Removing them separates the body (including the steps) from the chassis.
     
     
     
    The roof is a separate moulding from the rest of the coach body. It is glued fairly lightly onto the top of the body, and in every model I have seen it is easy to find a gap between roof and coach side large enough to insert a small jeweller’s screwdriver. Then gently start loosening the roof and the coach body, working around the roof much as one would gradually prise up a floorboard with a crowbar. I hope the photo above gives some indication of the approach I use. If you do encounter a point where the glue is so strong that it resists a screwdriver, a modelling knife with a sturdy blade will quickly free it.
     
    Prising off the roof allows you to remove the seating unit and the two strips of stiff transparent plastic that slot into the coach sides to provide the glazing. At this point you might consider whether to paint the seats to tone down their glossy shine (bear in mind that second class seats would probably have been bare wood, not upholstery) and possibly paint the inside of the carriage.
     
     
     
    And that’s all there is to dismantling the coach body!
     
    3) Tweak 1: adding flat ends to the coach body
    The most noticeable thing about the coach sides are the curved gaps (the tumblehomes, I suppose) at the bottom of the coach’s ends. It is visually interesting and it adds character, but almost all British coaches of the period had flat ends rather than tapered or curved ones.
     
    To be honest at most normal viewing angles (i.e. from above) this feature is not especially noticeable. But if you like to run models nearer to eye level or you want to reproduce a specific railway rather than freelance, you might decide to fill in the gaps at the ends of the coach to make the model more representative.
     
    I used Humbrol filler, pressing it into the gaps between the coach body and the top of the chassis until both gaps were completely filled. Of course other fillers would work just as well: Milliput, plaster of Paris, probably DAS or fine PolyFilla as well. All that really matters is that the filler is relatively easy to sand down when it has dried.
     
     
     
    If you have decided not to dismantle the coach, I suggest putting a bit of tape over the top of the chassis that is visible below the end of the coach before you start adding the filler. This means you don’t end up with the body and chassis permanently fixed together. Sellotape, masking tape, a bit of printer label: all work fine, and probably so would a small piece of cling film, kitchen foil or similar wrapped over the top of the chassis. Afterwards, when you have sanded down the filler, you can trim off any exposed tape.
     
    When the filler has set hard (probably 2-4 hours in most cases, but I waited 24 hours to be on the safe side), sand it down to get the correct profile. I wrapped a strip of very fine 400 grade wet-and-dry paper around a thin block of wood and found I could easily sand each end and the adjacent sides down to a reasonable profile in less than 5 minutes. I definitely recommend a dust mask (and if you have sensitive eyes, some eye protection as well), ideally some good ventilation and a work area that is easy to vacuum or brush afterwards. Sanding Humbrol filler is very quick and easy, but it does produce a fine dust that is light enough to hang around in the air for some time and IMO tastes pretty nasty!
     
     
     
    I found it was worth taking the filler to the top of the coach ends (rather than halfway up the side, as I did in the photo above) to prevent the visible joint that I managed to achieve on my first attempt, and which I only noticed after painting:
     
     
     
     
     
    4) Tweak 2: painting the body
     
    If you have filled in the ends, you will definitely want to paint the body because of the harlequin patchwork of colours that you now have on your model. Even if you are happy with the original shape, you may still want to repaint it in a different livery or tone down the plastic sheen of the model with a coat of matt varnish.
     
    Personally I prefer hand-brushing with Humbrol enamels, and most of these paints only come in matt and/or gloss finishes. When I was painting the coach I found that the matt enamels were too flat and boring and they didn’t seem to reflect any light, while gloss paints looked too brash and toy like. However, a coat of gloss paint covered by a thin coat of Humbrol’s matt varnish did seem to provide the right sort of finish – at least to my mind. The photo below shows the general effect:
     
     

    In this period railways often still painted the top section of the carriage sides black in imitation of the road coaches that they were putting out of business. This can add to the period charm, although anyone modelling an actual railway will probably want to carry out a bit of research to check whether there is any record of the chosen railway’s actual colour scheme. The Birmingham and Gloucester coaches were buff with black at the top, but I chose to paint my model in the blue of the London and Croydon railway.
     
    I am afraid I can’t offer any useful advice on using acrylic paints on the coaches, although I am practicing with them on scenery and buildings. But I will end this section with one comforting thought for other coarse modellers: remember that no one really knows the exact shade or finish on most early carriages!
     
    5) Tweak 3: fitting running boards below the coach
     
    The coaches have steps moulded beneath each compartment to allow passengers to climb down to the low platforms of the period. Steps like this were used by some early British railways in the 1830s, but the style was already going out of fashion by 1840 with most new coaches (and having just opened, most railways had nothing but new coaches) having running boards stretching along the full length of the coach.
     
    I made the running boards out of a piece of T-section plastic strip 2.4 x 2.4 mm, trimming off one of the arms of the “T” so that I was left with a “L” section 1.2 x 2.4 mm across. The 2.4 mm part of the L becomes the flat running board for the passenger to step on, while the 1.2 mm side is glued vertically to the axle boxes to fix the board in place.
     
    The axle boxes have a bit of detail on them, so I filled this off with a needle file and carried on filing back the axle boxes below the coach springs for about half a millimetre before super-gluing the narrower side of the L strip onto these flat surfaces.
     
     
     
    Fixing the L strip to the axle boxes provides all the structural support that is needed. But I also wanted to model the hangers that drop from the underside of the chassis to the running boards. Small pieces of plastic rod or stiff wire would be fine, but I used the very small (Size 25) staples sold for pocket staplers such as the Rexel “Bambi” stapler. I straightened out one of the arms of a strip of staples using a pair of pliers, separated them into individual staples and then superglued the long arms of the resulting L shapes to the underside of the coach chassis and the ends of the short arm to the back of the running board. (The advantage of staples over bent wire is that staples have flat sides, making it easier to fix them in place.) I found a map pin extremely useful in tweaking the staples while the glue was setting. It is important to allow plenty of time for the glue holding the four staples on one side to set firm before starting on the other running board.

     
     
    The photo below shows the staples in place on one side of the coach before painting.
     
     
     
    I hope some of these ideas will be useful, or even better that they will inspire readers to find other ways of converting the model. If anyone has stuck with me this far, I will certainly be very interested in any questions, ideas or comments you have!
     
    In the next post I’ll look at ways to alter the roof (and the lamp covers on the roof), change to finer scale wheels (plus some ideas on how to camouflage the deep flanges on the existing wheels), add weight (the model only weighs 20 grams) and also discuss some ideas on suitable couplers.

  13. Ian Simpson

    Making progress slowly

    By Ian Simpson,


    1840s layout
    Well, the navvies have been hard at work and most of the trackwork at the Grand Terminus Station has been laid down. Or if you prefer I’ve finally managed to glue two Peco points and 26 inches of flexitrack onto a foamcore baseboard.
     

     
    There are a couple of changes from my original mock-up. I’ve used a Y point to give a few extra centimetres of length to the rear track, and I’ve decided to use a horizontal traverser sliding between the two tracks at the end of the station, rather than a pivoted sector table. These changes mean I can fit an island platform around 2 inches wide between the tracks. That would have been acceptable at a time when Railway Inspectorate regulation was distinctly light touch; yet another advantage of the period for the slap-dash modeller!
     
    Wooden rods (stirrers from coffee shops) beneath the baseboard operate the points. I like Mercontrol for point operation, but you can only put a point lever in one place and I wanted to operate this layout from both the front and the back. With a width slightly over four inches it’s possible to run the coffer stirrers under the board so they stick out on both sides. I’ve painted them matt black to match the foamcore, and since the front of the stirrer only has to jut out a centimetre from the front facia to grip it, I don’t think they will be too obtrusive.
     

     
    Peco streamline points have a small plastic circle in the middle of the tie-bar, designed to fit around the bar of the Peco point motor. But it also fits the track pin I use to link the tie-bar and the coffee stirrer. To be on the safe side I've made supporting brackets for the point rods from sawn-up disposable razors (the U channel handle from Lidl’s razor holds a coffee stirrer snugly) and freebie Health Lottery plasticard. I don’t think these brackets are absolutely necessary, but I had the materials in stock and wanted to experiment. I’m a great fan of simple, low tech, cheap solutions, and so far this arrangement is working well.
     

     
    The free, help yourself Health Lottery plastic cards displayed in supermarkets are actually very good quality 0.030” / 0.75 mm plastic card beneath all that advertising guff on their surface. They cut, score, snap and glue very well indeed. Cement-style plastic glues don't work (as the advertising coating on the surface doesn't melt), but superglue sticks extremely well. It’s a source of modelling material that I use a lot, and you’ll probably be heartily sick of hearing about its virtues after I’ve posted a couple more updates.
     
    I bought some brass cosmetic fishplates from Wizard Models a few months ago (they’re actually made by the EM Gauge Society). As an experiment I’ve superglued a few of them onto the Peco rail joiners around the points (but only on the side of the rail that the viewer will see): they can be seen in the bottom left of the photo below. So far they don’t seem to interfere with the running of locos or stock, even with Bachmann’s rather coarse US profile flanges, so we’ll see how they go.
     

     
    You probably can’t have too many fishplates on an 1840 layout. Companies like the Birmingham & Gloucester and the London & Croydon used rails that were 15 feet long. (I’ll let you decide how uncomfortable the constant jolts would have been for passengers on wooden second-class seats at top speeds of 30 mph.) For the purist, fifteen foot rail lengths would mean fishplates every two inches in HO. So Setrack rails may be too heavy for 1840 track, but their length is considerably more authentic than my yard-long lengths of Flexitrack!
     
    UPDATE (May 2020): For an alternative method of manual point control that keeps all the parts on top of the board, see my post "... lessons have been learned" - although this particular change is just to try something new, rather than a lesson learned, as the coffee stirrer rods always operated the PECO points perfectly!

  14. Ian Simpson
    Early railway companies were usually launched in a mood of heady optimism, only for the disgruntled shareholders to learn that building the damn thing was going to take a lot longer than anyone had expected. You may have noticed that the Middenshire & Fiddleyard Trunk Railway continues this venerable tradition. Even so, taking 18 months to ballast two foot of track did rather play on my conscience.
     
    I decided to tackle the problem with sheets of Poundland sandpaper. Early railways completely covered their sleepers with ballast, so I figured I might as well use paper inserts and have done with it. I don't expect my layout will get too many knocks and all my locos moved out of warranty more than forty years ago, so I'm prepared to try this idea out - but at the risk of stating the bleeding obvious I guess I should point out that delicate precision mechanisms and abrasive flakes of grit may not be the best combination for prized locos. This is an experiment to test whether it really is possible to seal the surface of the sandpaper so it's not a risk to stock (nor a constant source of tidying up).
     
    The sheets of sandpaper come in an assortment of grades, and I used the fine sheets for this project. I'll explain this choice and discuss whether I should have used a larger, coarser grade in my next post. The sheets have thin backing paper, making them easy to score, easy to cut – and also quite easy to tear. I shook them and vacuumed them to get any loose grains of sand off the paper, then sprayed glue over the sheets to try and fix all the remaining grains in place. (Matt vanish works as well, but I had a spare can of spray mount glue to use up.)

    Here's my recipe for anyone reckless enough or desperate enough to consider sandpaper inserts:
     
    Place the sandpaper face up over the trackwork, and holding the sheet firmly in place rub a suitable object over the top of the rails so that they are embossed through the paper. I used the rounded handle of a disposable knife to do this, but a coin would do just as well. It’s basically brass-rubbing for modellers.

    For sections where the rails are straight, it's best to move the now-embossed piece of sandpaper to a cutting board and use a steel ruler to produce a perfectly straight edge. Given the rough surface you'll be cutting and the thin backing paper's propensity to tear, make sure the ruler is positioned so that any slips or tears are on the outside of the insert.
     
    When working over curved rails or pointwork it's probably easiest to just cut the paper in situ using the inside of the rail as a cutting guide. The best way to do this is to make shallow cuts with just the tip of the blade, running it along the inside face of the rail just below its head, using the web as a guide. (I'll very happy to admit it: I'd never even heard these terms until I visited https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_profile )

    Don't cut deeply enough to hit the chairs or sleepers, or you won't get a smooth edge that fits snugly against the inside of the rail afterwards.
     
    Cutting through gritty, abrasive material does your knife blade no good at all. Change it frequently to avoid tearing the backing paper as it gets blunted. Actually, make that very frequently – I found one of those cheap tear-off-the-blunt-length-of-blade-with-pliers DIY knives is much more convenient for this work than a Stanley knife.
     
    Once the inserts are in place, push a wagon (ideally with the deepest flanges you can find) over the rails a few times to press down the inserts where they fit up against the rails.

    Very small blobs of blutack on the sleepers at strategic intervals will keep the inserts in place, while still allowing them to be easily removed for track repairs. 
     
    Here's my first attempt, warts and all. And since all the materials cost me less than a pound, and the inserts are only held in place with Blutack, it'll be quick enough and cheap enough to do it all over again properly now I've had a bit of practice!

     
     
     
    I'm not sure any railway did have ballast this colour, so my next blog will describe my attempts to paint it a more realistic colour.





  15. Ian Simpson

    Ballasting Part 2 - the painty bit

    By Ian Simpson,


    1840s track
    What did railway ballast look like in 1840? Obviously it depended on local geology and the tastes and budgets of the individual companies, but there were some common features that mark it out from later methods. We know that on most early railways the ballast completely covered the sleepers, hiding them from view (a feature that continued throughout most of the 19th century) . Lithographs that include track beds show a smooth plain surface, suggesting individual pieces of ballast were very small. Coloured prints of early railways around London often show the ballast with a fairly bland yellowy-orangey-buffy-creamy tint.
     
    It usually wasn't the large grey chunks of crushed stone so common on today's railways. For example the London and Croydon company rushed completion of its line in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid a shareholders’ revolt. Francis Whishaw described the resulting ballast as a mishmash of “broken stones, brick-rubbish, and gravel”. Sadly Woodland Scenics doesn’t include that one in its range. In other areas convenient materials such as sand and ash were used as ballast. So there's plenty of scope for painting up the sandpaper to suit personal tastes.
     
    My first attempt to paint the inserts that I had produced in part 1 using acrylic paints gave too uniform a shade - although I'm sure those more familiar with acrylics would have made a decent job of it. Rather than persevere and learn something new, I went back to my usual-default-in-a-crisis Humbrol enamels. Humbrol 129 is called Pale Stone, and ballast is only pale stone, I thought ...

     
    I preferred working with the enamel paint, but I still felt the ballast needed more variety than just a single uniform colour. In addition, I found cutting out individual inserts then painting each one of them in turn was a bit of a hassle. I started to wonder whether it would be easier to paint up whole sheets of sandpaper, perhaps with a base colour dabbled over with splotches in other colours, and then cut out the painted track inserts.
     
    Experiments showed that it was as easy to paint sandpaper with household emulsion paint as it was with acrylics or enamels. So I visited the local DIY store and came back with some small match pots of Dulux paints that were on special offer at a pound each. Looking at the colour charts I decided to experiment with Coastal Grey, Jurassic Stone and Muddy Puddle for my base coat. The three paint colours, brushed directly onto the sandpaper, are shown below for comparison:

     
    In the end I settled for Muddy Puddle, for no better reason than it was the colour that I liked best. I applied the emulsion in the same way that I used for the enamel paints: a thin coat that covered the gritty surface rather than hiding it, using an old brush with reasonably soft bristles.

    When the emulsion had dried, I started dabbling splotches of Humbrol enamel Pale Stone over the surface to add a bit of variation.
     
    I used a technique that I can only describe as “rather damp dry-brushing” to apply the enamel paint: dipping an old paintbrush gently into the pot, dabbing a small blob of paint gently on the surface of the paper and then spreading the dab of paint outwards across the surface with a gentle scrubbing action for a centimetre or two in all directions before repeating the process a few centimetres away.

     
    This was actually rather quicker than it sounds – and it was quite empowering to find an area of modelling where my haphazard brushwork and patchy coats of paint were actually a bonus for once.

     
    The final effect looked like this. Since I'm colour-blind, I'll be grateful rather than outraged if you tell me I've got the colours wrong:

     
    Cutting out the inserts was a bit easier second time around, and I estimate that I'll become quite proficient by my fifth or sixth attempt. This doesn't discourage me, as the materials are cheap and it doesn't take long to prepare the sheets and cut out the inserts. If you do make a slight mistake and leave a gap, the thinness of the paper means it's easy to paste a small patch of ballast sheet over the flaw to hide it.

     
    Overall, I'm quite happy with what I've done at the moment. At least it looks as if I've made an effort. The fiddliest part using this methods is filling in the narrow spaces between ends of the point blades and the rails. It is possible to put narrow slivers of sandpaper in these spaces, but at the moment I've left them empty. This is still an experiment and I'm happy to progress slowly, testing how each part of the process works before going on the next task.

     
    The colours I used are a bit too bright and clean, even for freshly laid ballast on a newly-constructed railway. The best solution would probably a gentle coating of darker acrylics or weathering powders to tone the finish down. Perhaps a dirty wash of acrylic browns brushed lightly over the inserts would work, provided the surface doesn't get sopping wet - it is only paper, after all, and while slight warping might look natural, drenching the paper will create long unnatural-looking ridges. All I've done so far is rub over the inserts with the plastic handle of a knife, which darkens the grains a bit:

     
    This is just work in progress, but I think the method does have potential. It's great for plain track. It's a bit more fiddly for pointwork, but that gets easier with practice. It's a cheap process, made up of a series of quick little jobs that can be done in a few minutes while listening to the radio, and it doesn't require any special tools or skills, nor much outlay on materials. It may not produce the most realistic ballast I've ever seen - but then I've never seen 1840s ballast anyway. Overall I'm quite happy with the initial results, now I've dry-brushed a bit of Humbrol Leather paint over it to give a bit more colour.

     
    But now I've done it, I'm already wondering whether it wouldn't be easier just to make up an A4 JPG of a bed of gravel and then print ballast sheets out on a colour printer ...

  16. Ian Simpson

    Opening up the coaches

    By Ian Simpson,


    1840s coach
    Initially, early railways weren't very interested in third and fourth class passengers. Firstly they saw the big money coming from goods traffic rather than passengers anyway, a misconception that quickly vanished as the first main lines opened. Secondly, the passengers that they did want to attract were the well-heeled people who had previously travelled by stage coach, not the poorer folk who hitched a ride on the carter's wagon (or simply walked everywhere). But it didn't take railway managers long to realise there were lots of poor people out there ... and when they did recognise this fact they soon started providing open coaches - not always with seats - to earn a few extra quid.
     
     
     
    I decided to see if I could cut a Bachmann Prussia coach up into an open coach, and I was surprised to find how quick and easy the work can be. First I disassembled the coach and removed the seating unit and the glazing.

     
     
    My plan was simply to cut the sides of the coach along the top of the quarter lights (the curves at the bottom of the windows) with a razor saw. But when I removed the seating unit, the plastic side seemed a bit too thin, and so a bit too flexible, to saw across accurately without some reinforcement behind it. So I used some of the freebie lottery cards to pack out the interior and support the coach side during the sawing. (Pieces of wood, card etc would do just as well.) 

     
     
    After sawing the sides, I turned to the ends and sawed through them as well ...

     
     
    ... by which time it was taking shape ...

     
     
    ... especially when I cut the partitions of the seating unit down to match.

     
     
    The basic job took under 20 minutes, although a bit of tidying up was needed afterwards to improve the appearance.

     
     
    The seated passengers are by Preiser, although some of the figures on the platform are by Andrew Stadden.

     
     
    The early railway companies' decision to provide open coaches for the poor was based on financial considerations. My own spur to experiment with the Prussia coach was a chance to exhibit some of my models at Wealden Railway Group's Annual Exhibition when an exhibitor pulled out at the last moment.
     
    But the real star of the display was Nigel Hill's brilliant conversion of the Airfix/Dapol "Rocket" kit into an 1830s Stephenson Single (right hand side of the photo), so that will be my next post!

  17. Ian Simpson

    Knutterful Yard

    By Ian Simpson,


    a
    Bigger isn't always better. Allegedly.  So I thought I'd post a couple of photos to show how little space an early layout can need. Okay, an early diorama, to be honest, simply a tuning fork with a kick-back siding that can be operated by rope shunting or a second loco. 
     

     
    When doubling up as a French layout, I'll probably call it Pasunmetre instead. At 61 x 10 cms the total footprint is slightly less than a sheet of A4 paper.
     

     
    It's an animal-friendly layout: that "leather" trim is just sticky-backed plastic. Too late for a Blue Peter badge, I suppose.
    The wagons are by Nigel Hill (scratchbuilt plasticard bodies on commercial chassis) and Chris Cox (white metal kits at 5 & 9 Models).
     

  18. Ian Simpson

    A very basic battery controller

    By Ian Simpson,


    Basic Electrics
    I recently realised that all of the basic technology needed to operate a micro-layout (direct current circuits, voltaic batteries, primitive motors) had been developed before the 1840s started. Reading a bit further, I discovered the US inventor Thomas Davenport - not the very first person to build an electric motor, but almost certainly the first one to use it to power a model tramcar in the mid-1830s. His design was elegant, but not ideally suited for today's smaller scales:

     
    I also stumbled across Alfred P. Morgan's 1913 The Boy Electrician on Project Gutenberg, with its clever chapter on building a model electric tramway and this simple design (Fig 315) for a "A Pole-Changing Switch or Current Reverser":

     
    Well, Tinories is supposed to be a portable layout that can be set up and operated anywhere, and I had always planned to build a very basic battery controller. This simply had to make the locos move backwards and forwards; for my own use I considered acceleration and braking to be unnecessary fripperies, and only the thought of soldering had deterred me from knocking something together earlier. Inspired by the pioneering vision of Davenport and the optimistic ingenuity of Mr Morgan, I finally set to work:
     

     
    The base of the controller is just a plastic lottery card covered with Humbrol copper (MET 12) paint to disguise its origin. It only occurred to me afterwards to check that enamel copper paint isn't conductive; luckily it isn't!
    A drawing pin is glued to one end of the card. This is the pivot around which the actual controller moves. Edit: I would now drill a hole through the card and push the drawing pin through it, gluing it to the underside of the card so that the pivot is a bit more robust:

     
    A short length of PECO flexitrack was glued to a second strip of lottery card, using pre-soldered fishplates and a terminal block to make the rails live without any soldering:

     
    A hole was drilled through the centre of the terminal block so that it could drop over the drawing pin that had been glued to the base of the controller:

     
    Then the first terminal (taken from another electrical terminal block) was glued onto the base, at the opposite end of the  card to the drawing pin. To my surprise, it was actually very easy to stick the curved underside of the terminal to the plastic card with generic super glue::

     
    The next step was the only one which required any care. I pressed one of the rails against the first terminal, and then glued the second terminal in place so that it touched the other rail and made a circuit. (A multimeter isn't necessary for this stage; a lamp or buzzer - or even a loco - would be just as effective in showing the right location to complete the circuit). Observant readers will note that I need to buy a new 9 volt battery:

     
    The same for the third and last terminal:

     
    ... and finally a short wire between terminals 2 and 3 so that they become positive or negative depending on the rail that is making contact with them:

     
    It's possible to customise the controller to taste, but I decided to leave it at that. I didn't even need to glue a knob onto the controller arm because a 9 volt battery fits snugly between the rails of 16.5 mm track and provides a convenient grip:

     
    Update 22 May 2021: just an additional photo showing the 56 ohm dropper resistor I use to get the Bachmann Norris loco to crawl as slowly as possible. It varies by loco, so the deWitt Clinton needs a much smaller dropper to run.

  19. Ian Simpson
    It took a while for the early railway companies to decide on the best design for points / switches / turnouts. Personally I've always liked the "stub point" design in which the running rails move to set the road, rather than the typical blades. Perhaps it's a design for sleepy sidings rather than high speed main lines:

     
    A broken PECO streamline point seemed an ideal starting point to add a stub point to the layout:

     
    Pulling off the blades was therapeutic for the eight seconds it took, and cutting through the running rails was quick and easy with a mini-tool. It's actually a rotary tool used by nail technicians to work on nail extensions. I bought it for around £7 on eBay, and it's been an excellent buy. I hoped a tool designed for work on delicate fingers would be useful for delicate modelling work, and it does have very manageable slow lower speeds. It's the first tool I've had that actually lets me cut and grind rails accurately. I wouldn't want to cut through massive sheets of brass with it, but it's perfect for softer materials.
     

     
    The last few inches of the track before the stub point aren't glued to the baseboard so the flexible track can move from side to side to match up with each road:

     

     
    Control is by a coffer stirrer super-glued to the front sleeper of the flexitrack. I haven't decided whether to power the sidings or use rope shunting, so I'll probably do both. 
    The clearances do look as if they were inspired by Triang Series 3 track. Leaving a couple of centimetres of the blades superglued to the sleepers would produce a more realistic model with less flexitrack movement and smaller gaps between the rails. 
     
  20. Ian Simpson
    Truth be told, my miniscule branch terminus (provisionally nicknamed "Tinories") probably wouldn't have had any fixed signals in 1840. All that would have been needed to control the trains at that time were a pocket watch (so that a train could be given a five or ten minute start along the line before the following train was allowed to depart) and some red flags for the railway policemen to wave frantically in an emergency. But I've always had a soft spot for the rotating disc signals used by companies like the Great Western and the London & Croydon.
     
    It's very easy to build a rotating signal: you just need a stick, a disc and a drop of glue. In my case I used a length of skewer, collected during a visit to a posh burger joint, and the flat head of an office drawing pin:

     
    I wound some copper wire around the pole of the signal to make a bracket for the cam mechanism that was going to turn the post through 90 degrees. This was easier than I expected - I just had to use a pair of pliers to keep squeezing the (reasonably) soft and pliable wire into the correct shape:

     

     

     
    Then I glued the wire bracket to the post, remembering to glue it at 45 degrees to the face of the disc so that the cam would be able move the signal into the two positions required (disc facing the driver for "Stop", and disc turned sideways though 90 degrees for "Go"):

     
    All that's needed is a hole drilled in the baseboard to hold the bottom of the signal post, with just enough slack to allow it to turn freely. I added a small length of brass tubing at the bottom of the signal post just to make the arrangement look a bit more visually interesting (and because I've had it in the spares box for years and never found a use for it before):

     
    I used a coffer stirrer rod to operate the signal, with a piece of copper wire running through the bracket to move it from side to side:

     
    And that was it. Surprisingly simple and effective, even if I do say it about myself.
     
    Oh, and does it actually work? Of course it does:

     

     
  21. Ian Simpson
    In an earlier post on Bachmann's John Bull locomotive I described the difficulty of converting the high-sided shed covering the tender drive into any British-style tender. My own rather lazy approach was to adapt the existing body to resemble an early van (although goods vans were rare beasts in 1840; most early railways simply flung a tarpaulin over everything).
     
    Nigel Hill has been rather more inventive, building a couple of very attractive replacement bodies. Both transform the tender drive into a useful piece of stock that looks great sitting behind non-motorised locos. He's kindly given me permission to describe his models here.
     
    Removing Bachmann's own body from the chassis is a real puzzle until you know the trick. The front of the tender body has a gap in the green plastic just below roof level. On the left hand side of this gap you should be able to spot or feel a raised strip of metal that prevents the body sliding off the chassis. Simply insert a small screwdriver blade beneath the lip of the plastic and gently prise it over the metal strip. Once it is free of the metal, the tender body can be slid upwards off the chassis.

     

     
    Nigel's first design is for an break van [the original spelling] made of plasticard. In 1840 most goods trains still ran without a brake van, which must have played a big part in the extraordinarily high levels of wear and tear reported by early wagon superintendents. But primitive brakes similar to Nigel's model were beginning to come into use as more powerful goods locomotives allowed freight trains to become faster and heavier.
     

     
    A particularly attractive feature of Nigel's model is the lantern lookout on top of the roof, made from transparent plastic. This model is still work in progress, and I think it will be wonderful when it's completed and painted out.
     

     
    The pipes loaded on the low-sided wagon in the photos below are Chris Cox's marvellous castings of the London and Croydon Railway's atmospheric tubes. Since the tubes were provided by contractors, they are very similar in appearance to the ones used on other atmospheric railways like the South Devon in the mid-1840s. Let's hope that this Company isn't planning to make a similarly expensive mistake ...
     

     
    Nigel's second model is based on a Great Northern Railway horsebox, although many other railways had very similar designs. It is also built of plasticard, this time with horizontally scribed planking. Nigel points out that while early prints often show a horse box and carriage wagon attached to the end of the train like an primitive version of Motorail, railways soon learned to move the horseboxes next to the loco to give their valuable occupants a smoother journey. That's useful, because a powered horsebox is definitely better sitting right behind the loco instead of pushing an entire passenger train.
     

     
    Because the horsebox towers over the Bachmann coach roofs, at first I though Nigel had built it in 4 mm scale rather than 3.5 mm! But when I checked the drawings I found he really had built it in HO: the prototype's roof was 11 feet above the rail tops, more than a foot higher than contemporary coach heights. Early coaches couldn't make full use of the loading gauge because of luggage stored on top of their roofs, oil lamp covers, even brakemen sitting on top of them.
     

     

     
    And Nigel's primary interest isn't even early British railways - it's Scandinavian and especially Norwegian railways.
     

     


  22. Ian Simpson
    There's not a lot of progress to report on the layout this week, although the wiring is now in place (except for the traverser: at my current rate of progress I will probably write about that in a couple of weeks). The underside of the baseboard is now taking on rather a Heath Robinson-ish appearance with wires running over the point rods and held in place with blutack.

    So I thought I'd bulk up this post with a few notes on the Bachmann Norris locomotive. Actually Bachmann made two versions of the model, and either would suit a Birmingham & Gloucester layout:
    Lafayette (1837) is in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad livery of green boiler with black chimney, cylinders, wheels and firebox. It comes with a typical early US chimney with spark catcher. Watch out if you get a chance to buy the Lafayette train set, as it often comes with US-style bogie coaches that don't suit British practice. (In addition buying the train set version can mean you are paying for track and a 120 volt transformer / controller as well). Prussia (1838) is in Berlin-Potsdam Railway colours: red and green boiler and lots of brass-coloured fittings. The matching Prussia coaches are the ones that can be seen in earlier posts.

    The small motor is in the haystack firebox, powering the driving axle below. All six wheels on the locomotive pick up current from the rails, with wires running beneath the boiler from the bogie to the motor. Despite the short wheelbase I’ve found the unmodified model can run reasonably slowly over a run of three adjacent short radius Peco Electrofrog points without any problems at all.

    But the model's light weight (only 64 grams, including the tender) can lead to wheel slipping and loss of traction. I’ve added weight to the bogie to improve the leading wheels’ contact with the rails, and the hollow boiler and tender can also be used to add weight if desired. Personally I like the loco's slight tendency to wheel slip when starting off with a rack of coaches; it gives the impression the loco really is struggling to overcome inertia.

    The prototype had an interesting story. At a time when railways around the world were buying locomotives from British manufacturers like Stephenson and Sharp Roberts, the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway stood out as the only English railway to import locos from abroad. While the BGR really did need three of Norris's powerful locos to bank the Lickey Incline, the unscrupulous builder also manoveured the BGR's naïve directors into buying eleven less powerful engines as well. Designed for American conditions, the heavy British rails quickly damaged the locomotives’ cast iron wheels while their fireboxes, built for burning wood rather than coke, also caused problems. The B&G's inexperienced enginemen put several out of action during their first few months in service, and the situation only improved when James McConnell became loco foreman at Bromsgrove in July 1841. Most of these smaller locos were sold to smaller railways, collieries and contractors in the mid-1840s, although the bankers remained in service until the mid-1850s. The full story of the locos, including the one-sided negotiations with Norris, is given in Peter Long and Wilber Awdry’s 1979 book The Birmingham and Gloucester Railway.
  23. Ian Simpson
    Sorry this second instalment has taken so long to appear! Just one reminder before I continue my suggestions for the Bachmann Prussia coach: this post and its predecessor are meant to be a menu of ideas, not a recipe to be followed to the letter. Please use or modify the bits that you like and don’t feel that you have to do everything that I did!
     
    6) Tweak 4: replacing the buffers
     
    The Prussia coach has dumb buffers, a very early feature. By 1840 almost all new British coaches had.the more familiar sprung buffers fitted. So I decided to update the buffers on my model.
     
    Using a sturdy blade or a razor saw, I cut off the heads of the buffers just in front of the first moulded band. Using a razor saw was a bit quicker than a knife blade, the knife blade seemed to give a cleaner cut, but both methods were fine. (Hint: if you are thinking about adding lamp covers to the coach roof, try to save a couple of the pieces of buffer that you saw off. As we’ll see, the buffer ends can be recycled as tops for the lamp covers.)

     
    When I was working with the razor saw I used a very fine-toothed blade and simply pulled it slowly back across the plastic, letting the teeth do all the work, rather than hack sawing furiously in both directions. For the knife experiment I used a lightweight DIY knife with a disposable blade, and here I did need to hack through the plastic with a vigorous to-and-fro sawing motion. This last technique may make more talented modellers wince, but in my own modelling I’ve found I use a Stanley knife ten times more frequently than I use a craft knife.
     
    I then drilled a hole in what I fondly imagined to be the centre of the buffer stump using a pin vice (this is one of the few specialist modelling tools that I do use a lot) and a 1 mm drill bit. I found that (a) I couldn’t get a hole drilled at a true right angle very easily and (b) the fit for the replacement buffer was a bit tight, but using a map pin with a tapered point as a makeshift reamer to open out the hole solved both problems.

     
    I spent quite a lot of time searching hardware stores for nails and pins that might act as replacement buffer heads, but in the end I gave up: I discovered even the smallest nails have shanks that are too thick for a buffer, while all the pins I found had heads that were too small and led to buffer locking.
     
    So I used 51L’s HO buffer heads (£3 for a dozen steel buffer heads and shanks, available from www.wizardmodels.co.uk – the reference number is LOC3512). Alternatively you could use small 4mm buffer heads.

     
    A drop of superglue keeps the buffer head firmly in place inside the hole in the buffer stump, although I had to learn the hard way to make sure the buffer shank was in line from the side as well as above before I let the glue set. (But don’t worry if the buffer isn’t quite in line, a bit of gentle bending with needle nose pliers when the superglue has set will sort things out.)
     
    7) Tweak 5: fitting lamp covers on the roof
     
    By modern standards early railway carriages weren’t just cramped and uncomfortable, they were poorly lit as well. (In fairness to the early railway companies, in all these areas they were still a considerable improvement on the road coaches that they replaced. In a stagecoach there was normally no light at all inside the carriage, unless a traveller had brought their own lantern.) Early coaches usually had just two oil lamps shared between the three compartments (so that the middle compartment received light from each lamp), and these lamps were dropped down into the carriages through recesses in the roof. The rape oil in the lamps only provided a weak and flickering light, but domestic lighting wasn’t much better at the time and early travellers seem to have been quite happy to strain their eyesight reading on the train.
     
    The Bachmann Prussia coach has two lamp tops nicely moulded on the roof, although they are painted a garish yellow. (Was this meant to represent brass? If so, it was a total failure.) The quickest and simplest tweak is simply to paint or felt tip these lamp tops a dark colour to match or blend in with the rest of the roof.

     
    Better still, paint the roof at the same time! As I experimented, I felt that dark colours suited the roof best. Old favourites like Slate Grey all seemed too light, and in the end I settled on Humbrol Matt Black for the finished coach.
     
    However, early British coaches usually had rather prominent lamp covers that staff would fit on the roof over the lamps after they had been dropped down into the compartments. Designs varied in detail between the companies, but all the drawings I have seen show large, round metal tubes surrounding the lamp tops, rather like a large inverted tin can topped with a flat or more often a slightly domed top, resting on the roof of the carriage.
     
    The best way to make the round tubes is probably to cut thin plastic tube into portions around 3 mm long (i.e. just under a foot in scale length). Thin drinking straws could be used (e.g. the ones from small, individual boxes of juice), or discarded ball point pen refills, or I guess bits of parcel tape could be wrapped around a nail to build a cylinder of the right diameter, or cut-down N gauge barrels … whatever comes to hand is worth a try. I used the hollow handle from a cotton bud, cutting it into 3 mm lengths with a Stanley knife and then sanding the ends flat as my cutting proved a bit cack-handed.

     
    The top of the cylinder could be covered with a small disc of plastic or thin card, or one of the buffer heads mentioned earlier could be inserted to cap the tube. I decided to recycle the sawn-off ends of the dumb buffers to produce what I hoped would be a rather extravagant top to the covers, although I have to admit it looks a bit too prominent and in future I’ll be using flat tops instead.

     
    8) Tweak 6: Replacing the roof
     
    The Bachmann roof has a rather unusual profile: the usual curve across the coach finishes with a flat strip along each side above the doors. It’s a very unusual feature that I’ve never seen on British coach roofs, so I decided to replace it with a more orthodox convex card roof.
     
    It was quite easy to make the new roof. I used a sheet of fairly thick but flexible card and cut an oblong 60 x 31 mm, which is enough to allow an overhang of around half a millimetre on all sides of the body. Thin plastic would be flexible enough and it might take enamel paint a bit better than card, but I wanted to find a use for some of the flyers that keep landing on my doormat.

     
    Because the Bachmann roof is flat at its sides, so is the top of the coach that it sits on. I spent a couple of minutes rubbing each edge along a strip of very fine sandpaper (grit size 400) to bring the profile in line with the curve across the rest of the coach.

     
    I flexed the card between my fingers a few times to approximate the convex curve of the roof, gave it an initial coat of enamel paint and then glued it onto the top of the coach body using UHU. Normally I would use superglue, but in this case I wanted an adhesive that would allow me to prise the roof off easily with my fingers if I ever need to do so.
     
    The big problem with UHU, at least when I use it, it that it always leaves a fine string of glue between the nozzle and the surface I am working on. To get round this problem I now squirt a dollop of the glue onto a plastic card and brush it unto the surface with a retired paint brush. (Then I wipe the excess glue off the bristles with kitchen towel and clean the brush in hot soapy water, because a good retired paint brush is a valuable tool to have!)

     
    After the glue dried I gave the card roof a second coat of matt black enamel, added a couple of lamp covers on the roof over the compartment partitions – and that was the job done!
     
    9) Tweak 7: Adding extra weight
     
    The basic coach weighs 20 grams and none of the modifications I have described, even packing the ends of the coach with filler, adds significantly to the weight. The NMRA’s RP-20 Car Weight policy (http://www.nmra.org/beginner/weight ) recommends a weight of 2.5 ounces / 70 grams for a vehicle three inches long, but I didn’t want to overtax the small motors used in Bachmann’s early locos with too much weight. In addition early coaches were relatively light (and certainly not built to the US loading gauge used in the NMRA’s formula). I decided to compromise and aim for a modest increase to around 30 grams.
     
    I used the golfers’ lead tape again (I had previously used it to add weight to the traverser), but lead shot or any other heavy ballast would do as well. There is quite a deep recess in the chassis between the wheels, and this can be filled with extra weights as long as provision is made for the two small retaining screws that hold the seating unit in place within the coach. I used four strips of lead tape to fill this pit completely, then I tried putting the seating unit back in place and realised that the lugs on the base of the seating unit are designed to sit flush on the bottom of the recess! Luckily I was able to cut out a couple of slots in the soft lead tape fairly easily, but the moral is to leave enough room for the two lugs when you are adding your chosen material.

     
    I also put more strips of lead tape underneath the seats, as the seating unit has quite a bit of free space beneath the seats. The final weight of the reassembled coach with all this lead tape in place is around 27 grams. So a train of four coaches will weigh in at approximately 100 grams, or around three-and-a half ounces.

     
    After I had glued the new roof onto the coach, I realised I could have added extra weight by using some of Andrew Stadden’s seated figures as passengers. They are made of heavy pewter, they are beautifully cast with amazing detail and lifelike poses and if the paint isn’t too garish their Edwardian dresses and hats won’t be too obvious inside a glazed 1840s coach. (The HO figures are available at http://www.acstadden.co.uk/Pages/aaa.aspx, and he also produces similar period figures in 4 mm, 7 mm and a couple of sets of Edwardian passengers in 2 mm.)
     
    10) Tweak 8: Painting the wheels
     
    My first impression was that the shiny silver Bachmann wheels are too bright and toy-like. As I worked through the model I realised it was largely the back of the wheels that were causing the problem. (The front of the wheel has a red plastic hub and spokes, so that only the rims and flanges are silver. In addition the axle boxes hide most of the front of the wheels.)
     
    Since the Prussia coach doesn’t have any brake gear under the body, it’s easy to see the solid silver backs of the wheels under the body when viewing it at eye level. Adding running boards does lessen the effect, but I still thought I would try to reduce it further.
     
    I think the best approach is simply to paint the back of the wheels, and also the bright silver axles, with matt or satin black or brown paint - or you can use Humbrol metallic black enamel, if you want to keep a toned-down shine. Actually, now I realise how easy it is easy to mix enamel gloss and matt paints together, I use a mix of 1 part Humbrol metallic black to 2.5 parts Humbrol matt black. There is no need to remove the wheel sets from the axle boxes to do this, but it is easy to gently prise out an axle box by a millimetre or so with a finger tip to ease out the wheel set if you want to work on them. Or`rather it's easy if you do this before you add the running boards and all those fiddly bent staples [see Part 1 for details of this work], as I found out to my cost!

     
    It is difficult to replace the Bachmann wheel sets with alternatives from other manufacturers because the axle length is only 22.6 mm. The only spoked wheels I found that have suitable axles were from KB Scale (http://kbscale.com/wheels.html ): I used the 10.5 mm diameter 8 spoke wheels with 23 mm axles, which meant I had to open out the depressions in the axle boxes a tad with a pin vice and drill bit. This works after a fashion, and despite really being designed for 7 mm narrow gauge the wheels do look very good; but the replacement wheel sets still aren’t as free running as Bachmann’s own. I think in future I will keep the Bachmann wheel sets but visually tone them down as much as possible.
     
    11) Couplers
     
    The coaches were designed to be part of a tail-chasing train set and the default coupler is simply a rigid plastic bar linking the carriage with its neighbour. This works pretty well as long as you don’t want to couple or uncouple coaches. I will retain the coupling bars for fixed rakes of coaches, but I need working couplers at each end of the rake so that I can uncouple locos, add extra coaches and carriage wagons, etc.
     
    The buffer beams of the Bachmann models are too low for most (I suspect all) 4 mm couplers, so that all of these couplers tend to foul point blades. I think 3 mm and 2 mm couplers offer the best solution; PECO OOn9 couplers would probably also work well. I’m currently experimenting with D.G. 2 mm magnetic couplers (thankfully Wizard Models sell them ready-made – they look pretty fiddly to build from the etches!), and I’ll give an update when I’ve had a bit more experience with them.
     
    12) Conclusions

     
    Was it worth it? Well, it was a satisfying and enjoyable project that gave me a chance to try out several new ideas, so it was definitely worth it for me. But was it worth it in terms of the model? I’m probably a bit too close to the project to judge how much difference the individual tweaks really do make, but I think repainting the body and roof makes the greatest difference. So simply putting in 25% of the work would probably have produced 75% of the overall effect.
     
    I don’t claim any of the tweaks are essential, as the Prussia coach is a nice model in its own right, and I’m not sure the average person would notice most of the changes I made. But I rather like the finished product (despite my clumsy painting).
     
    Cost of the conversion? I used materials I already had in stock, so it cost £1 for the new buffers and probably another pound for the L-shaped plastic strip that I used for the running boards. I already had the paint and tools, and I think the amount of lead tape I used probably cost around 50p. Allowing for the cost of paint, glue etc, I’d guesstimate the cost of my conversion at around £3.50 a coach. (I'm excluding the cost of the KB wheels because I don't think they are necessary.)
     
    Time spent? Probably three hours (excluding the time trying out ideas that I later rejected), mainly quick little jobs that were spread over several evenings to allow time for paint, filler and glue to set, etc. Setting up a production line by working on a number of coaches at the same time would be the most efficient way to go, but I’d still suggest working on a single coach first to gain confidence and find out what works for you.
     
    There’s a lot more that could be done to the coach so I’ll end with a few ideas, most of which I will try myself:
     
    (a) Fit luggage rails (and luggage) to the roof to add visual interest. The best way to do this would probably be with loco handrail knobs and silver-coloured wire.
     
    (b) Replace the deep glazing sheets with flush glazing, probably using a clear resin compound. (I may try Krystal Klear when I do this, but I can’t recommend it as I haven’t used it yet.)
     
    (c) Add a seat on the roof for a guard and steps on the end of the coach allowing access.
     
    (d) Change the class: fill in the side windows (the “quarter lights”) with filler to make a second-class coach, or leave them open for the central compartment to make a composite (2nd-1st-2nd) carriage. Perhaps cut off the top off the coach completely at the bottom of the windows to make an open, seated third class coach. (There are a lot of possible variations here: for example some second class coaches had roofs and ends but they had open sides above the door.)
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