4mm On Heather's workbench - on a Holden to…Yarmouth?

[Heather Kay]

More steps to completion.



Filling out the compartments and seating. Another tedious job (ain’t they all?) but nearly done.



The final interiors are for the composites. The compartment at the cheap end was originally a luggage space, but it was converted to truncated third class seating in the mid-1920s. I’d been puzzling how to deal with things for ages and ages, then I stumbled across a seating plan in the GERS journal. Spare brass compartment sections were adapted to make the rather convoluted corridor extension, and offcuts of the Ratio moulded seating sliced about to fit.

Once I’ve sorted the compartments out, I’ll clean them up and prime them. Basic colours only for these, nothing fancy pants. Then next week can be all about roofs.

 

[Heather Kay]

To cap it all - roofs!

Back in the dim and distant, Past Me thoughtfully deployed her Silhouette cutter to make roof bracing pieces. It had been decided we could use the provided vacuum-formed roofs, but more on that shortly.



The first task was to check the roof mouldings for fit against the bodywork. Then to trim to length and square up the ends. I did this by holding the roof on the body with quite an overhang at one end. I carefully drew a pencil along the outside edge of the top of the coach end to leave a mark under the white plastic roof. A sharp scalpel blade was used to carefully trim almost up to the mark, with finishing by file and sanding stick, checking against an engineer's square. Once happy one end was pretty square, the process was repeated to trim the moulded part to length. I allowed about a 0.75mm overhang each end.



I’ve cut way too many roof braces, but I didn’t know. Blocks of scrap styrene are used as support. At the outer ends, the idea is the roof is a tight fit between the ends, so it’s held by friction. I think they will require a little glue once final assembly is done. Each brace is glued in, pressed down carefully to ensure the roof meets it - each moulding is ever so slightly different. Hopefully, the braces will hold the profile adequately. Past Me didn’t account for the internal parts getting in the way, so a little surgery has been required here and there.



One roof done. Unfortunately, although I have enough mouldings for all 16 coaches, nearly half are gash*. It looks like they’ve been trimmed from the sheet so they’re not deep enough to fit the profile without gaps along the sides. Annoying. I can still finish up the remaining roofs with suitable detailing like rain strips, carriage board clips and ventilators, while we hope replacements will arrive and actually fit.

Ah, ventilators. The Great Eastern Railway is sort of famous for being careful with the pennies. Looking through the photo references, it seemed that many coaches were missing lots of roof vents. Were they removed during their service lives, or were they never installed in the first place. It seemed to me it was different if a coach was built with gas or electric lighting, or was converted later. I needed a pattern.



Eventually, some kind of pattern appeared. Smoking compartments (which also provided an answer to another question) and the lavatory seemed to be favoured with the luxury of a roof vent. The rest of the passengers had to make do with door droplights and louvred vents. Incidentally, I’ve never thought about how roof vents actually worked. Did they draw air into the coach, or encourage air out of it? Anyone know?





*Gash. I believe in the Royal Navy, this term was used for refuse and detritus that would be ejected over the side into the Oggin. In the print world, it referred to material that was essentially rubbish - some typeset galley with an error in it, for example - but kept in case it was useful for patching up other errors on artwork. Every paste-up artist, me included, had a "gash drawer" near their drawing board.

 

[Heather Kay]

The client and I have agreed that I should try to get as many little odds and ends sorted out before we think about handing over to anyone else. That means I shall attempt to fix the dodgy roofs, sort out the exposed brake end gangways, and tone up or down the rather bright Preiser seated figures.

Here is what I shall be working with on that latter score:


These are a little too modern for the 1920s, but they’ll be okay in dark recesses and when they’re darker overall.



We have children, seated people without legs, and those on the right are suitable for the period. Again, plenty of darker tones required.


Finally, animated figures which may not be used. They are seated, but when I was sorting them out they struck me as being a 1970s West German disco dance troupe!





In addition, we have these Modelu figures.

Better get the paint box out, then.

 

[Heather Kay]

Back to the roofs, specifically the seven roofs that don’t fit.



Here's the problem. The vacuum-formed roof has been cut from the sheet, but it’s not left enough material along the bottom to meet the top of the coach side. With no prospect of new roofs forthcoming, I need to see if I can graft replacement material along the bottom edges without the whole thing looking utterly rubbish.



The first job was to try to ascertain the centreline if the roof was of the right size. I did this by eyeballing the centre at each end, after aligning the roof on the body as best I could. I drew the line all along the inside of the roof. The roof braces were likewise marked with a centreline. The reason for all this chicanery? Read on.

If I could fix the crossbraces in the correct place, they would reveal the extent of the patchwork to do. A datum, of sorts, would be provided by the cutouts in the crossbraces that allowed the roof to slot into the coach body. It was important, too, to ensure the roof matched the brace curves as closely as possible. Time and swearing was needed to ensure this happened.

The photo shows the next stage, where I’ve added backing strips along each edge. In the end, I’ve since added more strips to support the grafted strip. The latter is much deeper than it needed to be, as I reasoned it was easier to remove material to get to the right depth than to add more if I got it wrong. The jury is out on that score.



After some more time and swearing, this was the result of one side grafting. Good enough. A little filler, and the rainstrips to be added, and it will pass muster.





Eventually, both sides were done to my satisfaction. Fettling and detailing can wait. Now I know the task is feasible, I ought to press on and get the other six roofs to a similar state. But first, I will go and lie down in a darkened room.

 

[Heather Kay]

It feels rather strange drawing this thread to a close when I haven’t actually finished anything. Nevertheless, my part in this story has come to an end.

All the coaches have been carefully packed, all the remaining parts sorted and labelled, and the track has been lifted from the test plank. It only remains for the client to collect things and take them home. He has someone else lined up who is willing to tackle the final stages. I hope I might be able to get some photos of the completed models at some point.

For my part, I have one final commission to deal with. As it’s building three GWR coaches from JLTRT kits, I’m in two minds about whether to open a fresh thread to document something I’ve done several times before. It might be I’ll just drop occasional updates into the What's On My Workbench thread. I shall see.