Stroudley 4 wheelers

[AllWight]

Hello All

I am currently building another rake of 4 close coupled coaches (ex Bachmann G scale Thomas the Tank Annie & Clarabels) into the Stroudley 4 wheel set.

I will post some progress pics up as i go along

Mark 

[hornbeam]

Should be a good read thank you mark.

I have no reason to, and it wouldn't fit my GWR 1960s line but I am tempted to build a rake and get a terrier tank in the future.

[Traininvain]

Sounds good -

and definitely worth an article for the G3 Newsletter please Mark

Ian

[AllWight]

Hi Ian

Do you really want the article as i did the same conversion a few years ago and the article was in the mag from 2009/2010 ish from vague memory

Mark

[Traininvain]

They will have forgotten by now so don't tell anyone else!

cheers

[AllWight]

How rude inferring that the readers are forgetful!!!

Who are you again??

[Jon Nazareth]

Mark

Being a follower of all things Stroudley, have you a picture of your early carriages?


Jon

[AllWight]

Hello

I will sort the pics out asap. My own stroudleys are in Southern Green as used on the IOW.

The new ones im doing are for a fellow G3 member and they will be in early LBSC livery with the drum vents on the roofs.

Mark

[AllWight]

Hello All

Just a little update the four coaches have all had the plastic moulded roof vents, grab handles, door handles, springs/axleboxes, buffers and hooks removed as well as the nose job done to the face.

The next process is to re-gauge the chassis floorplans and decide which of the coaches will be the brake ends.

Then the major surgery begins on three of the four coaches by turning one into a 5 compartment composite and the remaining two into the 3 compartment brake ends. The fourth coach will remain as a 4 compartment so this will have the least to do on it of the four coaches.

Mark

[AllWight]

A bit more work on dismantling the coach sides and next to do is the 3rd coach and the regauging

Mark

[Sleeper Agent]

A bit more work on dismantling the coach sides and next to do is the 3rd coach and the regauging

Mark

Hi Mark
I believe we met at Tywyn a few month back and I must say it was great seeing seeing a G3 layout in the flesh Your IoW coaches bashes were of particular interest as I had written Bachmann's tooling off for my own purposes but the block train really showed what could be squeezed out of them with some ingenuity.
I realise I should of just started off doing little more than repaint an Emily coach but wanted to see if I could also make a 3rd class version.

Happy so far but curious how you went about the beading on the two ends? Did you just cut up some plastic sheet or did you spice the moulding off a donor compartment? Lastly do you have any reconstruction tips or is it simply a case of gluing some bracers along the inside face of the compartment? Any close up pics would be most handy.

Kind Regards
Sleeper

[AllWight]

Hi

The end that had the molded nose and face was smoothed off so the nose was removed and a fresh skin of 30 thou plastic card glued over the end and I then added the beading in afterwards. There are longitudinal braces on the inside faces top and bottom to keep it all straight and square. Back2Bay6 used to do an interior kit of laser cut wood for the inside of the coaches and I am not sure whether it is still available as the owner Steve Warrington is sadly no longer with us. I also put a lump of lead flash inside the floor space of the middle compartment of each coach as they are very light.

Mark

[Sleeper Agent]

Ah I should of been more succinct when mentioning the ends. My intension is to eventually build a few Billington style bogies and six wheelers, so on top of the number of Emily coaches i've also amassed for four compartment prototypes I think i've enough non end donors in reserve without the need to modify the 'face' ends. What I meant was what did you do with the two ends on each platform side of your bashes? In my pic above the four compartment style beading is still present so that needs to go but such a removal destroys the panelling layout. For that did you laminate some plastic sheet cut to shape or did you carefully carve off the beading from donor compartments and join them together, much like with the rest of the coach? 

Thank you for the lead tip but I haven't given much consideration to the insides so far. With the two excellent LB&SCR Carriage Vols though i've got a pretty good guide for scratching in lieu of any convenient interior kits. The IoW is a little out of my way but I really must try and get down to the Bluebell to take some coach and Terrier pics.   

[AllWight]

Hi

Right On the 2 brake coaches and the 5 compartment coach the compartments were razor sawed with a brand new razor saw (never use an old one) down the centre line of the vertical beading of the window frame thus removing the small panel between each of the 4 compartments of each coach.

On the 2 brake coaches the compartments sections were than reconfigured and or compressed up so that the 3 compartment sections occupied 3/5's of the total length between the two end walls of the coach.
For the remaining 2/5's of the brake coaches is a completely new fabrication including the duckets and end windows out of 30 and 40 thou plastic card as well as micro strip from greenway from my local model shop. The small panel sections from between the compartments were discarded.

On the 5 compartment coach this was extremely tight as the ends had not been moved so essentially all of the coaches are all of the same length. All 10 compartment sections were carefully cut to be identical and joined from the rear on the top and bottom edge and then offered up to the empty coach side and a slight amount of trimming was required to make them all fit.

The 4 compartment coach had very minor work just the face off and re skin of the ends.

On the vertical join lines as i cut it in a mitre block with a new razor saw the only requirement was to put a tiny amount of filler in and a light rub back

The beading as supplied is what i have used however i did chop out the molded grab handles and door handles and these have been replaced with brass T handles from GRS and brass wire for the grab handles.

I also re used the roofs by razor sawing off the nasty roof vents putting a sheet of 30 though plastic card on the underside and plugging the top with filler. Then on the belt sander to smooth it off and re skin the roof top with 30 thou plastic sheet and detailed up with the gutter strips and then a spray of halfords grey. The glazing is also brand new as it was tricky to get the glazing out without wrecking it.

When i did my modifications there was 4 coaches with a total of 16 compartments or 32 compartments sections however once rebuilt on the 3 chopped coaches there was 1 compartment or 2 compartments sections that were surplus. I think i have some spare sections at home. If you want them i can get them to you. I have done 3 sets of four coaches to date. Mine were the first a second set which was identical went to a G3S member although now owned by a different person (who is threatening to westernize them) and the last set was supplied to the owner in primer grey as he is going to model his set in LBSC livery and he wanted to paint them himself.

Hope that answers all your questions
Mark

[Sleeper Agent]

Hi again.

Roger on the new razor. Mine isn't that old yet but definitely will be picking some spares at Warley. It's not really been critical for the most part though as bar the aforementioned ends i've been able to leave a decent amount of sacrificial width for error and then filing the edge back until happy. My mitre block is fine for most bodging but too slack for this job so instead have been using a small engineers square and resting it against the top and bottom edges of the compartment pending which end i'm attacking from.

I'm leaving the guard coaches for now as they look a bit ambitious for me and i'm still holding out hope Bachmann will (eventually) get round to enlarging their OO tooling but it's something I can always come back to.

I'm amazed you managed to get 5 compartments back in as i'm about a 1cm over length currently but that's fine as I don't mind the coach becoming a shade longer. This does mean the roof won't be reusable as it stands but again fine as I was planning to do my own thing due to not sticking to just the older four and five compartment prototypes.

I took your advice and recycled the ends for finishing the 3rd class beading and at the same time decided after a fashion to model a LBSC D73 (seen on p176 in LB&SCR CARRIAGES VOL 1). I'll glue, fill and prime this one up first as there's only a single joint to worry about and then return to the other with hopefully a little more know how. I'm not actually modelling the LBSC per say but i'll take you tip about GRS door handles when i'm filling out my next order from them

Regarding the compartment offer that would be nice but if you think the spares may be of future use for strengthening or for going toward another block set then absolutely no worries.   

Cheers Mark