Les Turnbull - With the end of the Broad Gauge, in 1892, the GWR began, from the 1880’s to build convertible locomotives and rolling stock for renewal of worn out items. This was begun under Joseph Armstrong and continued under William Dean. Among the new coaches were six 40’0” passenger brake vans which were the forerunner of equivalent narrow (Standard Gauge) vehicles. Having identified this I decided to build the Broad Gauge version to accompany my recent Broad Gauge locomotive. The build is in fact a conversation of a circa 1976 Metal Models kit for a Diagram K3 40’0”PVB.

The body of the kit consisted of a single etch for floor and sides, which was cut longitudinally to from two equal sides, retaining part floor for attaching a new 66mm wide floor. The windows to the double doors were plated over, on the inside and new end etches obtained from the BGS. Having made up a simple jig the new floor, sides and ends were set up and soldered in place to form the basic box, which was stiffened using the kit etched parts as a template.The sole bars from the kit were also used.

A new roof was cut and rolled and fitted to the body with 8BA studding, soldered to transverse stiffeners, being retained by brass lamps supplied in the original kit.

These coaches ran on 7’0” wheel base fixed bogies with sets of 6’0” springs. To produce a facsimile of the protype it was necessary to source similar sized white metal castings and a form of suspension units. Castings were sourced, reworked and new castings manufactured. The new spring castings were made up in pairs, being soldered to 0.5 x 5mm strips being fitted to the sole bars with epoxy resin. The suspension units were obtained from Connoisseur Models and widened to 44mm wide, over bearing faces, using the same method as for widening the body. The final assemblies were fitted with 10BA screws.

The model was finished with fixed running boards, sprung buffers, etc and finally painted and lined in the appropriate livery for the period.

Haines10259 - Very nice Les and a most unusual model. Do the bogies pivot at all or does it just rely on axle sideplay to go round corners? I presume that the originals were like the 'Long Toms' which I believe just relied on sideplay.

Turnbull21603 - Yes the bogies are fixed, as William Dean’s original design, the end float of the axles allow the vehicle to traverse curves. This worked very well on the Broad Gauge as Brunel designed his permanent way with easy, large radius, curves. Attached is a side view of the actual protype.

Jim Snowdon - And much the same as adopted, for a while, by the LNWR and Metropolitan Railway. There were even versions of the “rigid” 8-wheel underframe where the outer axles were in radial pony trucks. None of them liked sharp radius curves, the outer axles being prone to flange climbing derailment. Although we now regard the use of bogies on long vehicles as normal, adopting them seems to have something of a step into the unknown for the Victorian carriage designers, who clung on to essentially rigid 6- and 8-wheel chassis for longer than was perhaps necessary. Quite unlike their US counterparts, who realised very early on that the articulating capabilities of bogies (trucks) were a necessity in coping with the poor standards of track on even newly laid lines. Jim

paul copsey - Very nice Les , you used the old split er down the guts method , when I made the footplate for the Precursor in my avatar I made it front to rear rolling the splashers as I went then sliced it down the middle so ending up with two matched sides . It was then a simple case of soldering in spacers and bingo , one footplate . Even my mentor for scratch building hadn't thought of that one but was delighted that it worked . Cheers Paul

Turnbull21603 - Thanks Paul. The only way to convert a Standard Gauge vehicle to Broad Gauge is cut and shut, where practical.

The difference in width, using the pertinent GWR loading gauge, is 14mm. The protype was 10’0”” wide at the waist. Les