Accucraft Pairs Coaches.

[Marquis DeCarabas]

Has anyone ever tried removing the fillet to replicate the one that wasn't filletted and started sagging?

[laalratty]

I've honestly never heard of anyone trying that!

[IrishPeter]

If we are talking about the IMR pairs - F50-75. As originally rebuilt as bogie coaches all of them had the 9" gap in the middle to allow the workshop staff to monitor the condition of the bodies' inner ends.   x  This was a hangover from the days when they were close coupled pairs of four wheelers, and they could be separated for maintenance.  However, as 9" wide workmen were in short supply this was soon abandoned and the gap covered over probably in the early 1930s. As far as I know sagging was not a problem until Sir Philip tried to load two containers on one of the R wagon conversions in the 1960s at which point, the vehicle took a sag, and the springs bent like yesterday's kippers.

If you do succeed in doing this you will need to replace the beading of the outer ends on the inner ends.  

Interestingly, when some of the pairs were stripped in the late-1960s during the Conflat experiment, they bodies were again separated and two were used as waiting rooms on the island platform at St John's.  The rest were dumped in the yard for nature to take its course, and I assume they were burnt by the scrap men in 1975.

Peter in AZ

[Andrew]

Has anyone ever tried removing the fillet to replicate the one that wasn't filletted and started sagging?

Perhaps you could cheat and just paint a representation of Manx countryside on the fillet? And then only look at it side-on and never move it of course...

I have wondered about trying to replicate a little sag in a scratchbuild but I reckon it'd be tricky to get it to look convincing... FfR No. 22 would be a candidate - according to Festipedia:

Having lost the tension in the wooden underframe, a pronounced sag appeared in the body shape, so it was known as "the banana van." It held 56 in some discomfort; guards had to load the middle compartment first, shut the door, then load the side compartments, shutting the doors, ending with the compartments over the bogies. This was because the doors jammed and if you had loaded the ends first, you could not shut the middle doors

All the best,

Andrew.

[philipy]

You could get two 4wheeler bodies and mount them on a deliberately sagged u/frame. That would solve both the end beading problem and how to get a controlled sag, but then of course you'd have to get a pair of bogies. I dont know if they are available as spairs or something?

[IrishPeter]

The steel framed stock on the IMR has held up pretty well. F29-32; F35; F45-49 are the backbone of the fleet and have the fewest maintenance issues. F33/4; F40-44 have been withdrawn due to corrosion problems at the luggage end of the vehicle due to occasional spillage from the battery boxes under the guard's bench seat. I also imagine that the IMR habit of shipping fish of all descriptions in the Brake-luggage-thirds did not help!

The Banana coaches on the IMR tended to be the earlier wooden framed stock F1-28, and of these F1-8 seemed to be the worst, as well as being the oldest (1876-1881). Generally, when they were due for some serious attention they would be noticeably C shaped, with the heads of the tie rods embedded a couple of inches into the headstocks, and no more adjustment left on the 'bottle screws.'

The Cleminson six wheelers did not sag even though their frames were lighter due to the 11' + 11' + 11' wheelbase. Even after 20 years in Harry Cubbon's wing they were straight and square even though they were a bit lacking on paint and glass. MNR 17 (F39) due to its overall size (30') and shorter wheelbase (17' IIRC), has less of a tendency to sag than the IMR wooden framed bogie coaches.

Cheers,
Peter in AZ

[Marquis DeCarabas]

I don't think that the inner beading needs to be replicated. If you look at the review here - I'm pretty sure that I can see the beading on the inner ends: or am I imagining things?

[IrishPeter]

Yep, the beading is there all right.  Looks like Accy produced them the same way as the IMR - two four-wheeler bodies on a common underframe.

My recollection of the Pairs in service was that they were a bit tight in the knee room department when you tried to cram 8 in a compartment, but otherwise OK.  In the late 20s and early 30s they did paint the original identities on the inner ends of the vehicles for a while even after they had been renumbered F50-75.  In the early 20s they were still carrying their original numbers so each coach had two.  The GF did get that bit right!

FWIW, the plate frame bogies on the Pairs ride a heck of a lot better than the older diamond frame vehicles.  I went down to Port Erin the other day in F45 and ended up feeling like one of James Bond's Martinis!  The ride back in F9 (which has pinched a set of plate frames from one of the scrapped Pairs) was much less bumpy!

The colour scheme for the pairs is a bit tricky.  The early ones are brown and off white - as per the pic in Vol. 1 of Boyd, but that only gets us to 1917.  1917-1945 they seem to have been dark brown, though some may have been brown and tan.  Trouble is you need a bloody good B&W photo to distinguish the two.  That gets us to the end of the gap period, so we have no need to worry about post-war brown; red brown; and raspberry and custard. Also it would have been 'numb bum' seating in the Bs and Cs at that stage as seat cushions did not appear in the older stock until the mid-30s and then only on the seats. In fact I am pretty sure I travelled in a Pair that still had bare board seats as late as 1978!

Peter in AZ