The coach portion is a &--8216;business car&--8217; or earlier it would be called a &--8216;private car&--8217;. That is a coach that the public did not have access to at all, and was reserved for high ranking officials or owners of the railroad; there were very few vehicles like this in the UK. Mine I have decided is for the owner of the Railroad, it is a bit small really, at only 26ft long, but with a loco on the front, I could make a rather special vehicle, and this is it! The basic design comes from the coupe carriage that F W Webb the Mechanical engineer, and locomotive designer and builder of the London & North Western Railway in England, transposed to the American designs terms.

The body of the vehicle is made from 4mm thick solid PVC foam board, with plasticard trim for the &--8216;board and batten&--8217; style for the coach body. This replicates the early style of coach building using wide panels for covering the sides of the coaches; it was replaced by the much better known system of narrow vertical planks, known as &--8216;matchboarding&--8217;. Both methods covered a trussed side framing that is below the windows. This style of coach building used end doors only, and the windows slid upwards. Very different to the British style of carriage building that were generally built with individual compartments, with a side door to each compartment.

The general design follows a plan (no 58, a 3 part set, comprising business car/baggage car, and coach or combine, all 26ft long,) that were included in the American Magazine &--8216;Garden Railways&--8217;), though I did alter some things as I was building the interior. The body is built to slide down over the interior of this coach of the extra long base unit that has a small coal tender on the front, an under slung water tank between the bogies. Both bogies came from Hartland Loco Works (HLW), who have a very good system, run by Phil Jensen, who is a pillar of the Garden RR world, and has been of great assistance. The entire project would have been impossible without him and his expertise and knowledge of the extensive &--8216;Parts Bins&--8217; of HLW.

Here are 3 views of the coach, or more correctly private car (pv from now on), in various stages of the assembly.






The interior is built onto the base plate, and is made from the same style of foam board as the body. First the plywood base plate was scored for the planking, the ends are planked across the body, and the coach portion is planked &--8216;end to end&--8217;, when finished stain the floor to your liking. As this is a private car, so you decide what the interior is like. I deleted the baker heater, and decided that there will be steam heat from the loco, and added a fireplace to a modified corner of the private compartment in the centre of the vehicle. This necessitated a change of location for the toilet compartment &--8211; that was moved to the kitchen end of the vehicle, and the rear of the fireplace gained a wardrobe that would also be in real life heated by the rear of the fire, and chimney pipe. All the 5 sets of double seats were made of PVC foamboard, and plastic card, two are slightly deeper in thickness, these are for the Pullman style section in the private compartment. The stove shown in the plan is rather like a gas fired camping stove, and in my opinion was wrong. After some doodling and checking my reference books (Mansions on Rails &--8211; a very good book on these superb examples of the coachbuilders art), I drew out a design to the same floor plan but much larger. It can be seen in the photo below, taken both before and after painting.



The stove is finished in polished steel with brass trim, and is a coal fired version, which is the reason for the chimney poking out of the top. The sink is made from a couple of layers of PVC foam board, internally (to give a smooth finish with a strip of paper, and the bottom added after drilling it for he plughole, add a tiny washer for the ring of the plug hole. Again to smooth off the edges using a paintbrush add a fillet of PVA glue round the sides/base join, an leave it to dry. The worktop/drainer is a piece of 3mm foamboard, painted to replicate scrubbed wood (I use an Acrylic paint called &--8216;sandstone&--8217;), on the extreme right hand side I cobbled together from bits of tube and discs a hand operated lift pump for water for the sink. There is a bicycle spoke drain pipe added.

The sink cupboard has doors added onto a Slater&--8217;s plasticard 2mm wide planked front sheet and they have been painted a different colour; the hinges and handles are small pieces of plastic rod painted after the rest of the painting is complete with a black spirit marker. The division around the private cabin is again 3mm PVC foamboard, detailed with plasticard doors, and where the fireplace is fitted the corners are mitered. Add the fireplace cutting through the wall before fitting, and add a backing plate, the total depth will be 6mm. Add a hearth (mine is green tiles, with a front edging (painted steel) and mantle pieces &--8211; which will be finished as polished wood, with a brass edging. The corners of the fireplace wall are covered with cover strips, and these have been finished in a &--8216;mahogany finish as have the framing of the interior doors.

The toilet is made up &--8211; this is a very early vehicle (c. 1875 or so), I added a fold up nickel plated washbasin to the interior of the toilet compartment as well. For the metal basin I made a lucky find; my local supermarket sells some &--8216;antiseptic&--8217; lozenges, the plastic covering for these blister sheets was just about the right size, at about 14mm diameter. Cut off with care the uncrushed blister, fill the interior flush to the base, and there is your basin! Add a extra piece of paper trim around the outside to indicate the fixing rim, and add to a piece of 1mm plasticard to represent the folding part, then onto a 3mm base plate, and paint all but the bowl a wood colour. Fix finally to the wall, and add a drain pipe from the bottom, through the floor. I have added a water tank in the roof and a pipe to the washbasin and a delivery pipe to the toilet as well. The washbasin pipe is 1mm brass rod, with a couple of 1.5mm pads to get it to the centre of the washbasin base, and the delivery pipe to the toilet is a pierce of bicycle spoke (1.9mm dia) with a bend at the bottom. The tank itself sits on a couple of bearers, and they and the tank are from 3mm pvc foam.
My floor is finished as varnished wood; and needs some rugs/pieces of carpet to add some colour to it &--8211; have a look for a &--8216;Hobbies&--8217; or other such company that sell &--8216;Dolls house bits & pieces&--8217;, catalogues that usually appear towards the end of the year. In my Hobbies catalogue there are some small renditions in colour of some of the 1/12 scale carpets; these are just about the right size! Add a backing sheet of paper to give some stiffness to them and glue them down. Do not put any in the kitchen; there I have made a couple of duckboards for the kitchen crew to stand on; made from 1/2mm plasticard in 2mm wide strips, to a size of 45mm x 20mm and paint them a wood colour then add some dirt (made from earth, and dark earth, plus a lot of water to make it a &--8216;glaze&--8217; or transparent overlaying colour), to the surface to make them look slightly worn.


Here are 4 photos of the interior with the pv body behind, the roof still needs another layer, and then some detail will be added.






There is still, as you can see, some painting to complete, also the end railing need to be formed from rod and placed in position; the holes are drilled, and they are going to be made soon. The lower portion of the interior walls is painted a &--8216;teak colour, with the upper portion being &--8216;Antique White&--8217; which is a light cream colour. I think that Victorian vehicles would have had the interior in a dark wood colour overall, but that would I am afraid made things much too dark, so I compromised with these colours.


Complete picture