Coaches and that

This week has seen a few bits and pieces going on down on the island. Firstly, I've replaced the chassis that I buggered up under 'Cat' with a fresh one. I don't feel as bad breaking 109s as Portrams! It turns out that the gear which engages with the brass worm is quite a delicate plastic one and if you squeeze the body to cut a bit off, as I had, you can damage the teeth and then they doesn't mesh properly and it's game over. Lesson learnt. I used the pre-cut bits of chassis with the undamaged new bits inside. It's quite easy to swap them and as I'd spent quite a bit of time dismantling the first one I'd got quite good at it.

After saying last time that it was time to get on with the layout I have done some work on hiding the hitherto un-hidden hidden sidings. I started by building a firm wall and some supports.

I decided that the easiest way to cut the lid out of 9mm ply was to cut a template out of spare foam core board.

I cut the ply to fit and then cut some more foam core to form the wall between hidden and not hidden bits. Now I need to work out some form of handle that I can use to lift the lid on the sidings that can be hidden in some cunning way...

I bought a couple of part-built Corris coaches and a bag of bits a few weeks ago and finally decided to see what could be done. It turns out what could be done was to build a Corris clerestory roofed coach.

It came with no bogies but fortunately I'd acquired a pair of Minitrains bogies about the same time. It was a bit of a fiddle to get them to fit and to swing enough to go round corners but after a couple of false starts all is well now. I originally used the couplings from the bogies but stuck them on the buffer beams as the kit intended. Slightly concerned about the length of the chassis I tested the carriage and it got nearly all the way up the line before experiencing an issue; i.e. it threw the loco off the track.

I changed the Minitrains couplings for BEMO ones which have a wider loop and all was well.

The Corris made their bogie coaches by mounting two four wheel carriages on an underframe. I reverse engineered the idea and made a four wheeler out of bits of one of the dismantled bogie coaches. The balconies are chopped off a Lilliput Waldebahn coach (I had used the roof for something else). The balconies are slightly too long I think but close enough for rock and roll. The roof is just some styrene cut and sanded to shape. The whole thing sits on a butchered PECO wagon underframe.

On test at the quarry. Just need a Corris loco now. Come on Bachmann, lets have 'Peter Sam'.

The three figures and a dog I ordered from Fine scale model figures arrived. The poses are very good and the fat bloke sitting down may have been modelled on me. I'm looking forward to painting them.

I looked at the remaining bits of the Lilliput coach and thought hmm... looks quite nice like that. I chopped the handrail bits off and stuck a roof from Stan's bag o' bits on. I'll add different balconies using Narrow Planet Eggerbahn replacement etches. It should fit in with the other tram coaches then.

I'm not crowing...