More Iconic Carriages

My current model making focus is increasing the rolling stock to run on Wheal Ponder. This allows some greater variety at home and also some extra vehicles to cope with failures if I take the layout to shows. 

Unsurprisingly, having enjoyed building the Iconic Rail Corris bogie carriage kits, I’ve added their four wheel tram car and the brake van too. 

The four wheel tram car is a delightful little thing, though I suspect that the real ones were hideously uncomfortable to ride in at any speed!

The kit almost fell together. The injection moulded plastic pieces that form the four sides of the saloon were glued together. Inside which a 3D printed one piece chassis, floor and seats piece was slid. The balcony ends are more crisp injection mouldings, were added on each end with 3D printed ends attached to those. With care needed and a square to make sure everything lined up at right angles. More 3D pieces formed the lamp housings on the end panels, a one piece printed roof and there are two doors to add after glazing.

The wheels run in slots underneath with retaining plates to fix when painting is complete. 

The build took little more than an hour, even the end balconies are the correct height for my couplings!

The Corris brake van is a vehicle I’ve ridden in many times on the Talyllyn as it was a regular engineering train brake van back in the days when I had the time to volunteer out on the gang. One of my first items of NG7 rolling stock as a teenager was a scratchbuilt version. Whilst I still have it, its construction is a bit weak for any reliable use so I opted for building a new one from the kit. 

One thing I remember from riding by around in the real version is that the first thing we did in the morning was open the door and the last thing we did in the evening was shut it again and in between, the door stayed open all day. Photographs suggest the same happened when the van ran on the Corris and the door was only shut when the van was stabled somewhere not in use. 

The Iconic kit of the van has the door moulded shut and so I wanted to model the door open.

Thankfully, the door is just slightly wider than the panel that it slides in front of so is a fairly easy modification to make. 

It is a case of carefully cutting vertically through to the left of the door and horizontally along the top and bottom of the door removing both the door and the adjacent panel. This leaves you with the small left hand panel attached to the top framework and the bottom chassis side frame. The door can then be cut from the other panel and glued in the gap on the far right hand side leaving the opening in the middle. 

If you’re not feeling confident in this fine cutting, I’ve found Graham at Iconic to be very helpful in providing additional side panels with the kits for those who prefer hacking with a saw. 

Inside the van, I added a hand brake in the place where the real van has one and the bench seat along the back of the van plus a guard standing in the middle of the floor. This is an on30 figure and so short enough to stand up in the van. 

The van went together very easily and like the bogie carriages, has some whiteners frame parts and buffers to add some weight low down. 

Having enjoyed a test run on the layout, these will now enter the paint shop and be painted the same green as the bogie carriages.