How to Make a Styrene Roof for Carriages

One of the best ways to put a roof on any model carriage is to make a styrene roof curved to shape, to suit the carriage being built. This ensures that there is very little or no stresses from the roof material to “spring” the Urethane cast sides.

This is easily done by taking a sheet of .20”/ .5mm styrene sheet and cut to length and width to suit the carriage being roofed. It is good practice to add/allow an extra 5mm of material all round to ensure coverage is achieved – the excess material can be trimmed off in the final fitting.

Find a suitable length of steel tubing – if possible to the correct diameter required to suit the carriage kit end walls. I use a piece of steel tube I saved from a piece of exercise equipment (foot section), which had been discarded by a neighbor during a local shire, kerbside rubbish collection, but any metal tube can be used including vacuum cleaner pipe, pedestal fan etc.

Take the cut section of styrene sheet and tape the ends to the steel pipe using electrical tape ensuring that the styrene is square along the pipe. Then simply wind the tape tightly along the length of the pipe ensuring the styrene sheet is pulled tight onto the pipe

Take the pipe section and stand it in the kitchen sink ( I usually have the plastic side down) and prepare 2 full kettles of boiling water - I keep an old kettle spare for this purpose so that you have the water ready to go. With the water at boiling, carefully pour the boiled water down the inside of the tube – slowly I find is best, allowing more time for good heat transfer to the steel pipe.

 

 

Allow the pipe to cool and then remove the electrical tape to reveal a nicely shaped section of curved roof material.

Take the roof section and test fit it to carriage – carefully trim the long edge to achieve a neat fit to the carriage body – this might mean making several small cuts/trims till correct size is achieved - allow excess overhang on the ends to enable addition of bargeboards and carriage end trimmings.

Glue roof into place by firstly gluing (squarely) on the end walls then using a scalpel blade laden with glue on its top surface, gently lift the sides with the pointy end and push a little glue onto roof underside and then allow the roof to return to its position – hold in place until set and then tack a few more places. Once the roof is tacked into place, run a bead of glue down the inside of the body to seal along the length. Fit end detail and trim to length.

AY- AYB models Early Livery

Here is a couple of pics of some modelling done by Ross Green who has been with the S scale group for some time now. Ross has built these AY & AYB cars using WestOzModels kits, to run with his Dd & Dm suburban tank locomotives which he has previously scratchbuilt.

 Ross has chosen to paint his cars in the earlier Larch Green, Light Green, Cream and White livery which the carriages wore when they first entered service in 1945.

Ross remembers travelling in these carriages in this colour scheme as a young lad and wanted to recreate that period for his models.

There was much discussion, questioning and research that took place before paint was applied, as to what would be the correct combination of colours & how/where it would be applied to areas on the carriage.

Ross has mostly completed these models and brought them along to the recent running night to show others where he was at with the project. I think we all look forward to seeing this train of carriages running with one of Ross' D class tanks at the head of the train. 

AYB Suburban Brake

In 1945 as part of the WAGR rehabilitation program after WW2, a new set of six suburban cars including 4 AY’s and two AYB’s (#456 – 457) were built. Another set was built in 1946 including 2 AYB’s (458 & 459) and 2 AY cars. The AYB’s were basically an AY with a guards compartment at one end. They were built on steel underframes with matchboard sides and entered service in a larch green, light green & cream livery and able to accommodate 64 passengers, ably supplementing the ageing fleet of sidedoor/dogbox style cars predominantly in use on the suburban network.

The First class section of a suburban train was always at the Fremantle end and so the AYB at that end of the train was considered to be First Class whilst the AYB at the other end was considered to be Second class, despite there being no difference between the AY and AYB cars internally.

In October 1951 the WAGR chose to introduce a new standard livery for carriage stock, replacing indian red and two tone green and cream schemes, with an "All Over" larch green. In 1952 AYB's 456 & 457 were outshopped in the new Green livery with 458 & 459 following in 1955, During 1956 another livery of White, Green and red stripe had been applied to the railcars, becoming the standard "Suburban" livery. In 1963 this livery was applied to AYB 459 with 456 & 457 repainted in 1966 & 1967. AYB 458 is thought to have retained Green till as late as 1970 by which time both 456 & 457 had been written off in 1969. Modernisation also took place during the 60's with some of the cars losing their matchboard sides, crown light windows and ornate panel work above the windows, these niceties being replaced with plywood panelling in various stages, which for modelling purposes, requires some research by the modeller.

 In 1970's, AYB's 458 & 459 continued into Westrail service with refurbishment and Orange and Blue stripe livery. 1986 saw another refurbishment and a Green and Cream livery which saw them through till January 1991 when they were replaced by electric railcars. These two cars made it to preservation, in use until recently on the Pemberton Tramway.

The above model of AYB 456 has been achieved by kitbashing a WestOzModels "AY" body kit. After some planning and consideration of how to go about it, I set about cutting away sections of the rear compartment area of the AY body sides. Retaining upper and lower panelling, the windows were cut away and the single Guards compartment window was replaced with a window from another scrap AY side. Armed with measurements from the prototype the sides were shortened and new Door and Corner Posts were installed to form the end of the car, followed by panels between the window and doors. A new End was produced along with Guards doors to suit the prototype and then panelling detail was made and applied. I estimate this took about 20 hrs to achieve.

With modifications made to the side walls and a new end made, these were glued down to a base for use as a pattern and then rubber poured over them to make a mould. Once the moulds were dry, the first castings were made. The results are shown here below. Assembly of the first AYB model then took place using a rolled styrene roof.

After application of handrails and underfloor detailing the carriage was sprayed - first with a "Holts" grey auto primer and then colours applied (Humbrol & Revell). When the body paint had dried, handrails were picked out in Yellow and Silver, decals were applied and the car was sealed with a spray of Wattyl Matt Estapol. Windows were then applied using "Microscale Crystal Clear". With the windows dry, the last job was to fit bars to the Guards Door windows and carefully paint them in Yellow.

The pictures here, show the prototype model for the AYB Suburban Brake Car “Body” kit which is now available from WestOz Models.  This AYB "Body" kit is produced in polyurethane and comes with a aluminum roof. All other parts are available from Railwest Models.

The AYB seen here above, is formed from patterns produced by B. Norris for the AY, with kitbashing to AYB form carried out by N. Blinco of WestOz Models.

Prototype information complied from “A History of WAGR Passengers Carriages” by A. May and B. Gray