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Carriage making in 4mm
Good afternoon,
With the exception of my introduction, this is my first post, and I hope you'll find it of some interest.
A while ago I decided I'd like to build a carriage in card rather than plastic/styrene. My chosen coach is a Great North of Scotland railway (GNoSR) bogie third and corridor composite, which had interesting panelling and, at 14.6m (48') is nicely short, making it ideal fro a small layout such as mine will be. It is doubtful whether one ever got as far south as where my layout is intended, certain, actually, but then it's my train set.
I firstly came face-to-face with the need to form curves both at the corners of windows and, larger ones, on the outer panelling. This is fairly straightforward in styrene since one can file it, something that can't -as far as I know - be done in card.
So, after marking out some pieces of Bristol board and then applying shellac to said pieces (to stiffen, and, I thought, lessen the chance of 'feathering') I made a small punch and die to fit an old punch that was left over from my P4 trackmaking days. An advantage of having a lathe is that one can spend hours and hours making often unnecessary things...
The punch, shown towards the bottom of the photograph, worked well, and I was able to make the two sides, as shown in the photograph. I stuck the panelling frets to the sides proper and then....stalled!
I'm not sure how to proceed, but am thinking of wooden floor, wooden roof (I've found a moulding in B & Q that is almost correct - it's a bit wide and slightly too flat, but no-one will measure it) and ends possible of 3mm MDF, and a layer of thin perspex - although I'm not sure how to stick the sides to perspex - anyone any ideas on that? Grab rails, door handles, hinges ventilators corridor connections are items that I shall purchase. Bogies will be modified Hornby, although I might yet use others if I can find ones that look similar.
I'll keep you posted, if I may.
CliffH
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