Only short thread this as I never turned out gauge 1 coaches in the quantities I did with freight stock. Gottersee, my German layout, ran with RTR Marklin four and six wheelers and though I had plans to scratchbuild some it never transpired On Mardy the space limitations meant main line coaches were out of the question but the 'Mardy Dido' was an exception. Some colliery systems in the U.K ran works train to bring the miners in. These were typically formed of ancient main line coaches from before the turn of the century and in many cases were four or six wheelers Mardy Colliery acquired an ancient Highland Railway 'dogbox' as their first passenger vehicle which was usually hauled by the Neilson 0-4-0T 'Dandie Dinmont'. This was scratchbuilt in Polystyrene. You get an idea of just how basic the real thing was Relative luxury arrived with the purchase of a longer wheelbase Great Western coach, This was an etched set of sides, memory fails me on who produced them but they weren't very good! Now the Premier Railways coach kits were very interesting. Mike May wanted to do some kits that could be used to make generic Victorian bogie coaches. His team came up with the idea of injection moulded window and door details and profile milled wooden sections for the rest. In effect you could create any configuration of pre-grouping coach you wanted. I decided to do a rake of Barry railway six wheelers. The basic construction In primer. Now I had a choice of how I was going to get these around corners and opted for a 'half bogie' design rather than a Cleminson design. In this, one outer axle is fixed and the other two were on a hidden four wheel truck pivoted in the centre. These rode very well.
Waiting to be lined out. The wood grain could have been a bit less prominent. Now some coaches that I did not build were some LMS (London Midland and Scottish) period III coaches. A mate of mine , Terry Rose, was a master of constructing flush sided coaches from punched and formed Aluminium. His paint jobs were superb An LMS 'Stove R' six wheel parcel van A superb LMS six wheel diner He also did me a rake of 57ft suburban stock which bizarrely I never got round to photographing At a swapmeet on day I picked up a load of punched aluminium Midland railway Clerestory coach sides. This was as far as I got before someone made me an offer I couldn't refuse for them! Panelling was being added in styrene strip Kev
