More L & B coaches

[Snailrail]

I suppose when I became interested in 16mm garden railways it was almose inevitable that my main interest would be the Lynton and Barnstaple. It was a natural progression from my time in 4mm modelling where my interest was, and still is, the south western section of the Southern Railway.

This interest, in turn, no doubt stems from my origins as a Hampshireman, though I've spent all my life in Essex. My Dad came from Petersfield on the old LSWR and my grandparents' house backed onto the embankment for the Midhurst branch. I remember his stories of standing on Petersfield station watching the Schools class locos go through on their way to Portsmouth and moaning that it always seemed to be "Repton".

I'm sorry, I seem to have wandered off before I've even got started.

Well this where my L & B modelling started, long before the Accucraft Lew was thought of. In fact at the time I wondered if there would ever be a loco to go with it



This is a Tenmille brake composite kit which I bought probably 25 years ago. I started it, then it spent a few years in a bin liner on top of the wardrobe until 2 or 3 years back when I decided to do a bit more. As you can see it's now almost finished ! Just the footboards, a few little details and the interior ( though I must admit I can't raise much enthusiasm for interiors )




I then started to think about more coaches to go with it and it seemed that the only way to obtain most of the L & B coaches was to scratch build them. Looking at the construction of the kit it looked quite straight forward, apart from the tedious and time consuming business of cutting out the windows by hand with a Stanley knife.

I invested in a copy of the book "The Lynton and Barnstaple - measured and drawn", an expensive book but invaluable. I then set about scanning the drawings and printing them out full size for 16mm - each coach required three sheets of A4 joined together!

And then . . .

to be continued

Brian

[nzreg]

There is an advert on NZ tv where the main character always ends by saying "good things take time"
You have certainly produced a very good thing.
Well done.

[andymctractor]

When I started 16mm/ft from 4mm/ft I thought that detail modelling would be 4 times simpler but it wasn't. You seemed to have found the secret. However, unless you are really young you'll be too old to enjoy them if you plan to complete a whole rake at the rate you did this lovely coach.

[WVLR]

Brian, you have a PM

[cncmodeller]

Hi Brian,
I had to smile when I read your post as I have done exactly the same thing with my Tenmille L and B coach, Mine too was wrapped in the attic for about 20 or more years, I got disillusioned with the outer framing which I discovered had curved corners in reality and I didn't like the compromise.  So last summer I stripped it down and rebuilt it with 0.8mm laser cut plywood outer framing which I am now able to do these days, I was partly encouraged by the now three carriages at the rebuilt L and B and I was able to find the colour their using which is Dulux Indian Red. It was a bit of a struggle to paint as I used white cellulose but obviously oil based Indian red, but what I did do was spray the outer framing separately and then very carefully epoxy them on.
The metal details of this kit are superb and I intend to do three more but as only the details are now available I will have to laser cut the inners as well the problem being at the moment is that plywood of 2.4mm thick is rarer than hens teeth. John[/img]

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[Snailrail]

Thanks for the comments. I realised that I don't have enough years left to maintain the previous rate of progress so I have increased productivity from "non-existent" to "modest". I am hoping this will be sufficient to achieve a whole train before I am too decrepit to play with it !

John

Like you I realised that the top corners of the outer framing should be round, a fact which is conveniently ignored in the instructions. I got round it by simply filling them in with some wood filler using a small piece of metal tube of the right radius to help form the curve. When I say "simply" I mean it was fiddly, time consuming, finger knackering work, but in the end after some work with a craft knife and fine sandpaper it looked ok.

I have two more coaches on the go, which will form episode two of this saga, which I will try to post shortly,

Brian

[Gremlin]

some very impressive coaching skills from you two, nicely done.

[nzreg]

the problem being at the moment is that plywood of 2.4mm thick is rarer than hens teeth.

This is available, good people to deal with.

http://www.micromark.com/birch-plywood- ... ,6916.html

[Snailrail]

I got my ply from these people http://balsacabin.webs.com/plybirch.html who are very handy for me being in Maldon Essex. They stock thin ply in various sizes, the one I used for my coach sides is quoted as 3/32 or 2mm. I've just measured it as best I can and it seems to be about 2.3 mm.

[jim@NAL]

that's a lovly bit of modelling there well done.that takes a lot of time patients and skill

[Soar Valley Light]

Well done Brian, that's a lovely job. I'm not sure I could achieve anything like that standard in 200 years, never mind 20!

Like you I have a soft spot for things Southern and for the L&B in particular. Barnstaple Town was the first signal box I ever visited (aged about 3!). That visit has a lot to answer for over the following 48 years!

Back then I new nothing of the L&B but got to know the Ilfracombe line quite well. In later years I spent a good deal of time exploring the route of the L&B. It is, in my view, probably the finest of the British narrow gauge lines. I expect examples of it's rolling stock will find their way onto the Soar Valley Light in due course. Sadly I doubt a Lew will ever be within my financial reach.

Keep up the good work, I look forward to seeing your completed rake.

Andrew

[Peter Butler]

Truly impressive work there, both Snailrail and cncmodeller. The kits may be good but the builder is responsible for the finished item. Just brilliant!

[GTB]

the one I used for my coach sides is quoted as 3/32 or 2mm. I've just measured it as best I can and it seems to be about 2.3 mm.

The label is half wrong, 3/32" converts to 2.38mm in metric.

I get my ply from a local hobby shop that caters to the r/c and control line aircraft fraternity. Ship modelling shops are rarer, but they also stock it along with a good range of stripwood.

Graeme

[Big Al]

I find this model boat site has all the things a modeller could want all types of wood,Brass parts, Plastic strip and sheeting,Carbon fibre, Radio control spares, some nice kits and lot of useful tools ect. It's a large site well worth a browse.

http://www.cornwallmodelboats.co.uk/index.html

[cncmodeller]

Thanks guys for the leads on the plywood, I'm going to start three more carriages now, No 3,7 and 11.

[Snailrail]

Ok, here we go with episode 2 which will bring the project up to date. As I said after the Tenmille kit the rest were going to be scratch built ( ok, I'm using Tenmille bogies and most of their fittings but the rest is from scratch ). In actual fact I didn't feel that the kit was as accurate as it could have been, in particular the top panels in line with the ventilators seemed too deep. So for the rest I took the opportunity to subtly adjust the vertical heights of the panels to make them closer to the scale drawings without making the difference from the first coach too obvious.

My next coach I decided was to be one of the open centre third class observation coaches, quite an unusual and interesting design.

So I bought some sheets of ply from the Balsacabin as mentioned above and got to work. After cutting the sides to size I marked in pencil the position of all the beadings. The window openings were simply made 1mm smaller all round and cut out by first drilling the top corners with a wood bit of the right diameter to get the curves and then joining the dots with a Stanley knife.

The words of my dad kept coming back to me "measure twice - cut once". It would have been very easy to muck up the whole thing and waste hours of work. It was also constantly on my mind that it would be very easy to lose a finger !

Anyway after a lot of cutting and sanding I ended up with what I thought was an acceptable result. I couldn't find any suppliers of the 2mm x 1mm stripwood that Tenmille supply for the beading so I resorted to slicing 2mm strips off a sheet of 1mm ply. Unfortunately this left the edges with little "hairs" of the grain showing so each one had to be sanded - again fiddly and time consuming, but it worked.

I didn't take many photos of the progress on this but this shows the main assembly complete with the sides sprayed and lined


And here's a couple of it as it is now, about 80 per cent complete



One thing that concerned me slightly with this coach was how to make the intricate little brackets that go round the top of the central opening, a small detail, but vital to the appearance of the coach. Oh well, "he who dares - wins", so with a thin strip of brass and a length of brass rod curved to shape I soldered up the main shape without much trouble. Then the two tiny curved pieces each end were formed out of even smaller brass wire and fixed with low-melt solder to avoid disassembling what I'd just made !
I've done some fiddly jobs in my time but . . .
Anyway I think I created a reasonable replica


Having got thus far I decided to start another, this time a composite. Here are a couple of pictures which show the stages described above, first the sides marked out with the windows cut


And one with the beading added and the top corners rounded off with filler.


This brings the saga up to date. I will post more progress reports when there is some to report. My fourth and final coach, at least for the time being, will be one of the observation saloon brake composites, as the one preserved at the NRM. But before starting on that I really must completely finish at least one of the others.

Is it just me, or do others suffer from "Must-start-another-one" Syndrome, ending up with a roomful of models ranging from "just started" to "almost finished" ?

Brian

[cncmodeller]

I see you have found a drawing that actually has dimensions and isn't tiny, any idea where I might find the same?
How did the vertical height of the tenmille main windows compare to your drawing?

John

[Snailrail]

John,

As I mentioned at the beginning, the drawings are from a book called "The Lynton & Barnstaple Railway - Measured and Drawn". It's not cheap at about 60 quid but I think it's the author's life's work so I suppose is reasonable. As the name implies it has excellent scale drawings of virtually everything on the L & B. The coaches are drawn at 7mm scale with a few details actually at 16mm and are probably as close to accurate scale drawings as you'll get.

I scanned the drawings I wanted and enlarged them on a desk top publishing program so they were full size for 16mm. I had to print them out in parts on 3 sheets of A4 and join them together.

Comparing the drawing to the Tenmille kit it appears that the kit sides are about 4mm too short (in height, that is). The windows are near enough the right size but too low, along with the other beading, by that much. In other words, if you increased the height of the kit sides by putting 4mm on the bottom it would be pretty close, apart from those top panels which I mentioned above which need reducing in height.

Having already built the kit, I decided to build my others to match it rather than go for absolute accuracy and have them look noticeably different. To quote my dad again, "a blind man would be glad to see it"

Brian

[Keith S]

I think the must-start-another-one syndrome is useful sometimes. I have a terrible habit of trying to handle models that should be left alone because of glue drying, and especially paint. I had to paint the boiler jacket on my RH Billy THREE times because I just could not leave it alone long enough for the paint to dry properly. (To be fair it took a lot longer than it said on the tin for it to actually dry.) If I'd had another model on the go at the time I might have left it alone.

My train-modelling efforts basically centre around trying to select simple kits that look vaguely British as opposed to European or North American, that look OK with my one engine. I really admire your L&B coaches. You say you're slightly dissatisfied with this-or-that on your coaches, but they far exceed in scale appearance anything that I have done. I think the L&B is a really ideal subject for a scale model. The more I see of it the more I think that if I had known more I might have tried to concentrate more on one particular railway myself.

[LnBmad]

Beautiful work! I must finish the 3 I have in progress!