Double Coupé 2

The distraction of double coupé No.69 continues. I have been sent some new masters for two kits which require a mould to be made and casting to be done, I'm almost there with the construction of a Scalefour Society lever frame for a friend, I have a small casting order to complete, not to mention a long list of other more important jobs requiring my attention, yet somehow I just can't drag myself away from this carriage.

The most recent activity concerns the coupé ends which I have had to make from scratch. The words 'had to' make it sound like an unwelcome chore but it has been far from it, otherwise this task would have joined the aforementioned list.

Fig.1. Two ends were cut from 10 thou brass sheet (upcycled fret off-cuts) using the end of one of the first class carriages as a template. These were then marked up with three window apertures taking care to line them up with the body side windows. Holes were drilled in the window corners and joined up with a piercing saw before filing back to the frame edges.

Fig.2. The ends were annealed over a gas burner to soften the brass and clamped in a vice together with a 3mm dia steel rod (actually the shaft of a Swiss file) and gently pushed over to form the curve of the chariot end.

Fig.3. A second layer of 5 thou brass was soldered behind the window frames and cut out in the same way as before, filing back to leave a finer inner frame. The next stage will be either to solder on a small horizontal waist bead before uniting sides and ends to form the body, or to get on with any one of the more pressing tasks on my to-do list!