View Single Post
  #37  
Old 20th October 2014, 20:07
Toddington Ted's Avatar
Toddington Ted Toddington Ted is offline  
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: UK
Posts: 272
Andoversford - The Edwardian Years

Its been a while but I have been doing some model railway stuff this year.

Having amassed sufficient locos and rolling stock as well as changing some buildings and vehicles to suit, I have managed to produce a reasonable reproduction of Andoversford in the period after Nationalisation in 1948. All well and good but:
As a form of self-imposed punishment, I thought it would be fun to try and replicate my layout as it was in the period before 1923, when GWR and MSWJR trains were quite separate (the latter yet to have been absorbed by the former). I started with some of those good old Ratio coach kits, some were old ones I'd bought years ago and had to strip down whilst others were purchased via a well know auction site in various states. (You can buy very good MSWJR suitable stock in kit form but its expensive and I would class myself as a beginner with this stuff!)

As you probably know, the MSWJR never owned any of the Ratio 8 compartment arc-roofed 3rd suburban stock but a quick search on the Internet gave me some guidance on how to hack about with an 8 compartment 3rd to turn it into a 7 compartment 3rd. The bogies on the 8 compartment need to be replaced by the LNWR bogies from Ratio as the former MR bogies are too long.
In future, I'm going to need to invest in suitable motive power to haul these things but I will probably pay someone to build a MSWJR loco for me.

I have uploaded some images of the Edwardian GWR and MSWJR stock so far, and they don't do too bad "from the 2 feet away" test but my later efforts are better than my earlier ones! I have since done more work on the MSWJR coaches to smarten them up a bit for example.

I found the old Triang-Hornby GWR clerestories to be relatively easy to upgrade (partly because the raised mouldings are easier to paint and line out) although I needed to change the bogies as the originals were of the BR Mk1 type. The Triang Hornby non-corridor clerestories are not representative of any true GWR prototype but the Brake 3rds are reasonably close to a typical GWR diagram and good enough for me at least for now! the T36 Brake 3rd utilised an old Ratio T47 as a donor (should have bought a new kit!) and Shirescenes etched T36 sides. I found it a struggle but it was my 1st attempt in this area.

Numbering and lettering was done with Pressfix transfers (MR and GWR sets) and lining out was done by hand and much cursing.

I'll put a few more images up sometime.
Reply With Quote