A balcony coach for Angst-Lesspork

[Hugh Norwood]

Balcony coaches seem flavour of the month, so  I felt it was time I made a balcony-ended coach for Angst-Lesspork; my railmotor looked good, so what better starting point than the Five79/Chivers RC810 "Innisfail" coach kit?

A balcony coach by H Norwood, on Flickr

The first thing to do was construct two news ends with doors and windows. These were drawn up on the computer and printed on thin card (210gsm). Each end is a lamination of four layers and are quite stiff.

A balcony coach by H Norwood, on Flickr

I cut the floor into two halves and moved them out so that four planks were exposed at each end; the gap in the centre of the coach was filled with a suitable piece of styrene.

A balcony coach by H Norwood, on Flickr

The existing roof is now too short, so I made a new one by taping a rectangle of 210gsm card to a cylinder of suitable radius. On the outside of this, I stuck two more layers of card and set it aside for 48 hours. After drawing on the new roof section, I took the card off the former and cut the new roof out.

A balcony coach by H Norwood, on Flickr

The balcony railings were made from handrail wire with at each end two "medium" handrail knobs and two stanchions obtained from a marine modelling supplier. The photo shows the coach in nearly-finished state; it requires the roof furniture, some lining, and possibly a couple of passengers.

[paul ludlow]

Very nice Hugh, can't wait to see it fully finished. Knocks the spots off my ancient egger bash's.

[Jeff Schumaker]

Impressive work, Hugh.

Jeff S.

[jimowers]

Hugh, this is slightly off topic but my daughter sent me this card for Father's Day recently. It just shows what can be achieved with these cutter machines...

[Jeff Schumaker]

Hugh,

A question - is the tram a 3D print?

Jeff

[Hugh Norwood]

Yes, the loco is the "Dutch" tram loco from CWR.

[Jeff Schumaker]

Yes, the loco is the "Dutch" tram loco from CWR.

Thanks for the information.

Jeff S.

[Stefan Duda]

Good Morning, Hugh. An impressive coach if I may say so. A couple of questions about your card ends as I make some of my card models in a similar way.

The planks you have modelled are quite narrow, assuming you have scribed the gaps, what sort of tool did you use? Was it blunt, like a ball point pen, or sharp, like a knife,or a combination of the two? Did you get any problem with delamintion of the card layers?

For the glazing, have you just inserted glazing material of the correct size into the openings, or have you left a cutout in one of the inner layers of card, so that you can slide in a piece of glazing material from the top?

Cheers,

[Hugh Norwood]

Hi Stefan,
Yes the "planks" are scribed; I use a very old point from a compass set. It has a point but not a sharp one (I think it has been polished over the years). I use it for all my card modelling work. The scribing was done before that layer was stuck on the next layer down.

For the coach I stuck the glazing on the inside (for my buildings the glazing does slide down a gap between the outer layers - I must admit I hadn't thought about doing it on the coach, but it probably would have weakened the structure.

Thank you for your kind comments!

[Stefan Duda]

Thanks for that, Hugh. I was hoping you had some tips on how to avoid weakening the structure if you had used the method involving sliding the glazing between layers.

Cheers,
Stefan