Great Western Railway
I have always had a fascination with British railways. Ever since growing up with Thomas the Tank Engine, and identifying the classes of almost all the engines, I have loved their railways.
Therefore, I have wanted to model British trains. But, as we all know, imports by Mainline, Triang/Hornby, Wrenn and others are very expensive, if they can be found at all. Not having the money for such imports, I have recently turned to scratch building.
Technically, many of the British trains I'm working on are for a friend from Bradford, England, though some I am keeping. The main reason I got into scratch building these trains was for this person.
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| Great Western Railway Brake Van | Great Western Railway Brake Van |
The ones I scratch built outright are primarily Great Western Railway. This is because there is a website, www.greatwestern.org.uk that has authentic scanned blueprints from the 1930s from the Swindon Shops available for free download. However, I have done a London Midland Southern brake van (Caboose) and British Rail MK.1 Buffet Lounge car.
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Great Western Railway 12 Ton Goods Van
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Great Western Railway 20 Ton Coal Wagon
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| London Midland Southern Brake Van | British Rail MK 1 Coach |
The reason there are X2f horn-hook couplers on all the cars is that the trains I am giving to the person from Bradford will be played with by a child, and therefore, Kadee couplers, with their tricky knuckle spring, and delicate design, were not suitable. Plus, if I need to bend a coupler upwards or downwards to achieve proper height, I can do it.
Construction has varied quite a bit. In particular, the under frame suspension has been the most varied. Early on, I attached the axle bearings directly to holes in the sides of the journal boxes. Unfortunately, while this was the most prototypical way, there was no way to balance the car.
Then, on the London Midland Southern caboose, I made two channels run the length of the car with notches for the axles to rest in, and a strip to hold them in. Good. Now we had balance. New problems, though: we cannot see through the underside because of the channel. Also, it was too easy for the axles to be misaligned.
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| Early Suspension System | Experimental Suspension |
Okay, make four boxes the width of the wheel and have the axle notch in them. Excellent. Car finds its own level, easy to align the axles straight, and we can see through the underside. I had also managed to refit a car with this on one axle, as it was operating poorly with the old system.
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| Intermediate Suspension | Current Suspension |
A little philosophy here, please. This has been a difficult project, which I have a lot of in store for me. But what keeps me in it is that I now own models that very few people in America do. Almost no one owns a Great Western 12 Ton China Clay Wagon!
As long as I'm on my soapbox, maybe you too would benefit from these sorts of projects. If you put a railway museum on your layout, you could scratch build one British freight car as the museum's curiosity (There ARE museums like that--- When in Green Bay, the railway museum had a French boxcar from WWI, and a British Gresley A4 that Eisenhower used during the war).
Or, you could build a couple coaches using plans from the site I mentioned, and an engine. How to build an engine? My way is to buy a Thomas the Tank engine toy (!) and remove the face, give it an accurate paint job, and motorize it. Unfortunately, Eisenhower's train can't be done that way, as there was never an A4 in Thomasland.
If anything, this project has opened up new horizons for me. I plan to build some of these for myself and start a second layout, with British architecture, landscaping, and design.
