TomC

Growing up by the WCML in Camden in the late 70s and 80s, one of the odder looking trains were what I later learnt to be the Manchester and Liverpool Pullmans - with their striking reversed livery of grey with blue window surrounds. There were two 8 coach rakes - full trains - on the Manchester workings, and two four coach rakes that were formed with other standard coaches on the Liverpool Pullman. Each set did a return trip a day to suit business traffic and hauled normally by Class 86 locos - many places suggest they couldn't be hauled by diesels (although apparently though a Class 47 might have been suitable...?) so never really ventured off the WCML. I can only recall seeing the full Manchester set, but it's one of those interesting projects that will probably never be made RTR because of the niche nature of their operation, and you need 3 quite distinct coach types. Luckily Southern Pride make kits, so here's my attempt at making a Liverpool rake (at least to begin with!) of four coaches. The kits are a combination of plastic, resin and brass The resin is nicely moulded, but with a little cleaning up. Next stage is trimming the bottom of the roof over the resin sections, done best with a fresh scalpel blade Then after tiding up the sides, and gluing in the lower reinforcing ribs, gluing them to the resin ends (although ends in some cases is 1/3 of the coach) The roof is used to double check it's all square. Whilst the instructions don't say so, I then added Araldite to the insides of the joints as I don't trust superglue On the first one I glued the roof in place at this stage to ensure it was a solid box, but on the next two I'm trying to put the roof on later. A little filler needed on the side, as the joints between the brass and resin isn't perfect. Next up some painting - with the inevitable paint / fill / sand and repeat until the body joints are hidden. Whilst the paint is hardening, bogies are next - they need some opening up to allow EM gauge wheels in, then on with the floor - sides bent up and the resin components glued in place