- Some more-unusual short coaches -
- by Tony Richards -
A very late survivor, a Victorian Dia.U9 Tri-Composite with a central passenger luggage compartment in later BR Departmental use.
A couple of recent projects led to this part of the workbench being written. 4 and 6-wheel coaches have always held a particular fascination for me and I got fed up with the endless succession of Ratio GWR 4-wheelers and those awful early Hornby ersatz 4-wheelers that followed no known prototype and were, in reality, just toys. With a little imagination, and a little more effort, interesting alternatives could be made and ones which really rang the changes.
So, to start off, this is a Dia.T49 Third Class Brake, an 1891 vehicle, condemned in 1937 but reprieved for use as a Camp Coach until withdrawal in 1966. Happily, it now resides, fully restored, at Didcot, the now-spiritual home of the Great Western Railway.
The model is a hybrid build, consisting of a Shirescenes etched brass body kit and an adapted Ratio Brake Third chassis and roof. The etch for the body looks complicated but, even though the instructions were far from clear, it was quite an easy build, although one which required patience. The photo below shows the etch itself.
The body itself went together reasonably easily although the lookouts were a pain to fold up and attach through the slots. The Ratio roof was difficult to fit as there was so little to attach it to, just the thickness of the etch. It also required some reshaping and packing to match the profile of the ends. The Ratio floor was a little too short and too narrow for the body also, and required some packing pieces to enable a fit. All eventually went together however,
The photograph alongside shows the initial difficulties that were experienced with the roof, a dry fit at this stage. A lot of detail parts await adding also, including the interior, the drop lights and glazing and fittings for the ends. I drilled out the existing holes for the door and commode handles, this made them far easier to fit. The only parts of the etched kit I didn’t use were the brake and steam pipes at the ends [I used white metal castings instead] and the hand rails at the step end [I used fine wire]. These parts, as supplied, were flat, 2-D etches and not realistic.
Assembly was by epoxy resin and some superglue. The finished model was painted in dull brown to match the livery used by the GWR for its workmen’s trains in the early ‘30s and it will be joined by two Ratio All Third four-wheelers, also in brown, in the future. The livery used made an interesting change and it is one rarely seen.
The next build was a return to a maybe 50 year-old stalwart of the hobby, a Dia.U9 six-wheel Clerestory manufactured by N&C Keyser. I acquired this very cheaply via eBay, which was unusual as these often hammer above £25. The originals were white-metal throughout and very heavy. At 10ozs, too heavy really to be practical, especially as they were not particularly free running. I made one once before [here - https://srmg.org.uk/an-unusual-gwr-6-wheel-clerestory-tri-compo ] but wanted one which could actually be run with other stock without requiring a King to move it! Opposite is the model as bought.
A quick soak in boiling water released the ancient glue which held the model together and it came apart easily. The wheels were immediately binned. The body parts were immersed in Dettol for 48 hours to remove the paint, then washed in soapy water and buffed up with a soft brass brush. The sides came up particulalrly well and, the castings being so crisp, it suggests that this kit was one of the earlier productions and made before the moulds became worn. All that required any remedial attention were two commode handles on the lower of the sides below. They were cut away and replaced with wire formed to the same shape. The springs and their hangers were in particulalrly good shape and required no attention at all. See below.
To make the model useable, weight had to be lost and I decided to retain the metal sides only and use ends and a roof cut from a plastic Triang Clerestory coach. The ends were carefully cut from the body and a chamfer filed into each of the edges of their sides to correspond with a similar chamfer moulded into the ends of the metal sides. The Triang roof was carefully measured, cut into three and the end pieces retain to form the new roof. The following photographs show progress and the body shell shows how well the Triang ends fitted. White metal lamp pots were fitted to the roof before it was painted. A plastic card floor was also added at this stage.
It was now time to prime and then paint the body. The livery chosen was my usual choice, the 1927-34 simplified scheme. The ends, chassis and the roof were painted black. Before applying the roof, the body was glazed and seats and partitions fitted. The luggage section was given window grilles. Buffers, handrails and pipework were added to the ends and the coach lettered appropriately. Brass top-hat bearings were inserted into the axle boxes [which required a little opening out] and wheels then sprung it. The white metal axle boxes were then gently closed up a little to secure the wheels in place. The finished models runs smoothly and is a significantly lighter example of this attractive prototype than Keyser’s original.
And finally a pair of Ratio 4-wheel Thirds built to accompany the Dia T49 Brake third shown above in the Workmen’s Coach livery. These were built straight out-of-the-box with no added details other than white-metal vacuum pipes [as the Ratio ones are pants]. Of interest is the minimal branding that the GWR applied to these coaches.
