Wednesday 19 December 2012

MOTW - 117

This carriage is now one of the older ones in our fleet, a fact given away by the rather huffed-up appearance of the windows.


It was probably one of the last carriages I built where the floor was fixed and the roof was left removable up until the point when the model had been painted, then the glazing was slipped in and the roof glued in place before the carriage received a final spray of varnish.

It is the varnish which frosted the windows which was the inescapable downside of building the carriages this way. Because we now build them with a floor which can be pulled out, and back in again, at will the glazing does not have to be inserted until after the model is varnished meaning the windows can remain impeccably transparent.

Our model shows 117 running in the push-pull set in the mid-1990s. 

It had recently had a comprehensive rebuild that saw all the pillars rearranged and reduced in number so the narrow, vertical drop down windows it was built with in 1977 were replaced with the bigger, bus-style, design with the sliding openings at the top.

This made the carriage look very much like 121, which was the last of the six 'tin carrs' built at Boston Lodge in the late 70s and early 80s, but inevitably the two were never identical.

In the fullness of time I will have to get around to making another 117 to run on Bron Hebog along with the rest of this set.  Running the green and ivory livery on the WHR would be stretching modeller's licence too far, methinks.

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