Fastdax

Is that "Illustrated History of L.M.S.Coaches: 1923-1957"? I'm using another J&E book "The Illustrated History of LMS Standard Coaching Stock, Vol III: Non Corridor, Special Purpose and Self-Propelled Vehicles" by Jenkinson and Essery, which unfortunately has no detailed underframe drawing. (Why do all these books have such similar titles?!) I also use "Historic Carriage Drawings, Vol 2: LMS and Constituents" by Jenkinson, which has a fairly basic drawing. Thanks for the pointer to MJRs 48/49. I will see if I can get hold of them.

Thanks John. I made good use of the Jenkinson and Essery books, plus whatever photos I could find on the Interweb. Not that I found any really good pictures of these coaches' underpinnings though. The bogies will be harder to finish to a good level of detail as the Wahoh kits contain no brake parts at all.

Ian Kirk Coaches The underframe is about complete. I added the Kirk V-hangers and brake cylinders, but made up the cylinder supports and cranks from plasticard. The pull-rods to the bogies are just stubs of brass wire glued to the chassis. The compartment dividers are now all glued in: I thought a lot about how to attach the removable roof. I had some good advice from this forum and I surfed various blogs. In the end I decided to try something I hadn't seen before. This method replaces the bolts normally used to hold the roof down with false coach ends which slide inside the real coach ends. This does add about 1mm to the thickness of the coach end, but this shouldn't be noticeable. Hopefully a picture will make this clearer: The roof with its false ends slides down inside the bodyshell: I just need to fasten to the bottom of the false ends to the coach floor using screws, by some means. I'll also strengthen the joint between roof and false end with JB Plastic-Weld or similar as it will be subject to a pulling force. Batch-building of the Slaters seats is under way:

Ian Kirk Coaches Well it's been a while since I updated this thread, but work on the coach has progressed, albeit slowly. Part of the reason for this is that I was out of the country over Xmas and New Year, although I did get a chance to ride on the most southerly preserved stream train in the world: http://www.trendelfindelmundo.com.ar/en/index.html A good deal of this line and its rolling stock seems to have been built in the UK! Back to the build and I trimmed the compartment dividers to fit round the reinforcing strips above the windows, inside. Since the sides and ends are not glued to the floor yet, I could fix the dividers in place, using a scrap of plasticard cut to the same width as the floor to hold the sides at the correct spacing. Doing it like this means that the dividers fit nicely up to the inside of the roof (which is also not glued in place).. Meanwhile the underframe was progressing also, with the Kirk trussing (in black) and additional bracing (in white angle). The battery box was trimmed to the right height and fixed to the inside of the solebar. There is no voltage regulator supplied in the Kirk kit so I copied a whilemetal Mk.I box in black plasticard. As far as I can see from photos in my reference books, this is about the right shape for the LMS regulator. This is just the rough box shape, ready to be filed to suit: The dynamo supplied is also a bit rudimentary so I substituted a whitemetal one from CRT Kits. This is the raw casting before tidying up: More pictures soon.

Just found this thread so apologies for butting in late. Here's a close-up of the keyhole of 47327 that I took at the Midland Railway Butterley when I drove that engine a few years ago. As you can see, it has no sandbox filler lid, just the hole in the tank side and footplate. BTW I got my Dapol Jinty at the end of November (late crest, unnumbered). I fitted a Zimo/Chetter decoder from Digitrains and, as I type, it's shuttling back and forth on my layout with an unfinished Ian Kirk LMS composite compartment coach in tow :-) Ultimately I want to convert it to a push-pull fitted variant (as 47480) to run with this coach and the next coach off the workbench, which will be a brake third modified into a pull&push driving trailer.

I have found the gentleman in question - Bill Campbell "66C". Thanks for the tip, Bill.

Ian Kirk Coaches I'll make the roof removable. This will help when detailing the interior and adding lighting (one day!). To locate the roof, I'm following Mike Cawthorne's article in Barlow Works. Mike is from my local Sheffield 0 Gauge Group. I fitted cant rail gutter strips to the top of the sides, protruding upwards to form a ledge to sit the roof in. Because I hadn't yet glued the floor in, I could trim the roof to width, chop off the bow ends and slide it up to the ends and scribe a line from the inside. Once I had trimmed the ends, the roof sits nicely between the cant rail gutters. For now a couple of 'laccy bands hold it in place. The bogie mounting plates are also packed up by 1mm and epoxied in place. This puts the buffer beam at the correct height. It's starting to look like a coach now!

I just measured it at 398mm or 56' 10.28". It should be 57' 0" body length, of course. I think it's correct to have the ends inside the sides like this. I measure the overall width at 62.4mm or 8' 11". According to my Jenkinson and Essery, this should be 9' 0", so close enough. I do need to fill in those gaps, obviously.

Ian Kirk Coaches and Wayoh Bogies The Wayoh mounting bracket has two folded lugs to mount the unit. I simply sawed these off (vice, razor saw). That's better. The centre of the buffer beam is now at 23.5mm so a bit of plasticard packing and it will be at the required 24.5mm.

Yeah - the buffer hole is at about 26mm above the rail (3' 8.5") where it should be 24.5mm (3' 6"). I'll have to lose 1.5mm in the bogie mounting.

Ian Kirk Coaches I had a good session on the composite non-corridor coach today, due to being snowed in and having a cold. I finished adding hinges from 2mm lengths of 0.75mm plastic rod. As per someone else's thread (sorry - forgot where I saw this tip), the bottom hinge was made by fixing a bit of rod, letting it dry, cutting it back until it had a flat and vertical face, then gluing another bit of rod on top. This gives the bottom hinge more projection that the top two. Most of the details on the coach ends I didn't need or didn't like. I kept the coupling hook reinforcement plate but removed the buffer bases (I have replacement sprung buffers waiting) and "low relief" lamp brackets (I will make brass replacements). I removed the circular jumper cable bases as I will need to make four for this motor-equipped coach and it seemed easier to make four new ones the same than to try and match what's there already. I also filed and sanded the mounding pips off the inside face. The line between body end and buffer beam was a raised line, so I scribed it into a groove which survived the filing and sanding and preserved the location of the bottom of the body sides. So now I could attach the ends to the sides and cut the floor to length and width. I made a start on the underframe girders but had to divert into making bogies as the Wayoh bogies have a very different mounting arrangement to the Kirk bogies. Here you can see the black Kirk bogie bearing block on the left and the etched brass Wayoh one on the right. A bit of fettling of the girders and the brass one had a place to fit. The Wayoh bogies have an etched brass frame and resin-cast decorative sides. Rivets allow each side to rotate with respect to the central stretcher, giving a bit of flex and compensation. Tiny clothes pegs were very useful when laminating the layers together! A taper broach keeps the centre holes aligned. Here's where I am after a day of work. The body sides and ends are fixed together but are just resting over the floor, which is just sitting on the bogies. I think the whole body is sitting about 1mm too high, as the buffer holes are above the Jinty's buffer centre lines. The way to fix this is to reduce the height of the brass mounting block by a millimeter before it gets epoxied to the underside of the floor.

Also take a look at Rob Pulham's excellent thread: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/77693-kirk-coaches-52-bg-and-51-all-3rd/page-3&do=findComment&comment=2294653

Really useful Bill, Thanks.

One question I'm now facing - do I make the floor or the roof removable? I have seen opinions in favour of both ways of leaving the interior accessible. Has anyone got any advice?

I was playing with my new toy - a Mobius M2 action cam. I told that it would be great for walking or skiing holidays, but really it was for this: It's a quick trip down Offerston Quay from under the high-level station towards the factory gates at the end of the goods yard. Motive power is my Dapol 08 with Zimo and Chetter sound. The Mobius is sitting on a JLTRT 1-plank Midland wagon, whose buffers just make it onto the wide-angle shot ;-) You will notice the Hachette Mallard that I'm building for my brother and a Connoisseur Lowmac ready for the paint shop.

IMHO I'd keep it at 3 storeys, because you have two 2-storey buildings already, at front left and front right. A taller one will help break up the rooflines a bit.

Thanks Simon. I did have a look at Slaters but I couldn't spot any 7mm door vents. From pictures, the vents on these coaches are quite flat and plain, not the slatted type. so simple plasticard shapes will do quite well. I do have a pile of Slater's coach seats ready to fit when I get as far as the interior.

Urgh! In the nicest possible way!

Ian Kirk Coaches I felt another jig coming on. Not a little dance, but a device to help me position the door vents which I had sanded off and therefore had to replace. The door vents are cut from a strip of 3.5mm x 1.0mm plasticard with the edges rounded over. Measuring the drawings, 10mm seemed the right length. The jig is positioned over a door and centred by eye, then the vent is placed into it and held down (tip of scalpel) while the jig is removed. Then a dab of MEK holds the vent in place. You can also see here the holes for the door bump stops, made using the previous jig. Just the hinges to apply now and I can blast the sides with primer to see how they will look.

Thanks. I will.

I'm sure he is a lovely guy and I really do like his products. Sorry if I came on a bit strong. Because of the hobby we are in, we are no doubt all slightly old fashioned to one degree or another :-)

Thanks Jinty! I did get two sets of Wayoh bogies for the Kirk coaches but was slightly disappointed when they turned up with resin sides, not whitemetal. These are such light models that they will need some weight adding and I'd rather add it low down on the bogies than in the body shell. It's interesting that Premier do RTR bogies so cheap. It's a pity that their ordering system is so primitive. Cheques or Postal Orders? Really? It costs little to set up a PayPal account and tell people to transfer cash into it, or quote bank details for an instant transfer. Messing about with envelopes, stamps, handwriting etc. makes me want to not bother. Rant over. Maybe I'll fit the Wayoh bogies and, if I'm still not happy, see if Premier are at Doncaster in June.

John, yes absolutely! I made a little jig to allow accurate drilling of holes for the T-handle and grab rails. The above photo is a view of the back. The rectangle with rounded corners is a tight fit into a door's window aperture. The wooden rails keep it aligned with the top and bottom of the coach side. It's then a simple matter of clicking it into a window aperture, holding it down firmly and drilling through (1.0mm for the T-handle and 0.45mm for the grab rail). Here's the jig in position from the front: This is the result, the same for every door. Since there are 30 doors to do, it saves quite a bit of marking out. I need to work out the position of the bump stops and drill more holes in the jig for them, then drill the sides. Luckily I thought ahead and made the jig big enough to cover the position of the bump stops. Thanks for the link. How are you getting on with your build?

Ian Kirk LMS Push Pull Coaches Well that didn't go too badly. I used 120 grit paper in my random-orbit palm sander, followed by 240 grit, followed by a hand sanding using 280 grit flexible pads. The coach side is now beautifully smooth, even if some of the window frame detail has been lost. I could re-scribe this or just leave it. I made sure the door joints were still present by carefully scoring with a scalpel. In this photo I have left it dusty so that you can see the door joints. It's now had a trip through the ultrasonic cleaner and is drying.

Ian Kirk LMS Push Pull Coaches At the Doncaster show last year I bought a couple of Ian Kirk 7mm coach kits. These are 57' non-gangwayed LMS Period II - a 1st/3rd Composite and a Brake Third. My plan is to turn the brake third into an ex-LMS driving trailer and make a 2-coach push-pull set to work with my new Dapol Jinty. My Jenkinson book ("Historic Carriage Drawings Volume 2 - LMS") tells me that these coaches lasted until 1964 - still just in service in my 1962 time-frame. You get what you pay for with these kits. Don't expect a "shake the box" offering. The detail is basic but can easily be added to or changed to suit the level of detail you want. I made up one side of the composite coach first, using a straight-edge to keep the tops of the panels level (as the bottoms are a bit ragged). The side is backed with a couple of strips of 1.5mm (60 thou) plasticard, above and below the windows. Only when the side was glued up did I spot that the doors were of a slightly thicker material than the window modules, making the doors stand proud of the sides. The handle and buffer stop detail is also a bit basic, and there are no moulded grab rails. Also the ventilators above the doors look a bit wrong, so I think the solution is to sand all details and raised bits off the side and replace with wire and plasticard scratch-built replacements. This will probably end in disaster so please keep your fingers crossed!