Sandy Shores - Grounded Carriage - Part 2


This grounded carriage is one of those projects where you know it's going to be a long slog, but still you can't ever anticipate to what degree; and it's certainly been a labour of love.

Allow me, if you will, to go back to my inner thoughts a day or two ago: "make a plasticard curved roof - it can't be difficult, just pre-bend the material and glue it to some formers to help it retain its shape" - HA! As if!

What actually happened was I spent hours in vain pre-bending and gluing it, trying as many different methods as I could think of to get it to stay in the right shape. I wrapped it in rubber bands, nope; I weighed it down with weights, nope; I tied it tightly with masking tape, nope! Anyway, you get the idea; despite the pre-bending, it was determined to stay as flat as possible. Disgruntled, I left it well alone and went to bed. (And yes, I did consider cutting slits in the back to help it bend, but the plasticard seemed very brittle; plus I wanted it to curve smoothly).

So, determined not be beaten, I took a new approach; over-the-top pre-bending by hand was followed by carefully squeezing the whole assembly (roof & the three formers) into a vice, adding copious amounts of plastic cement, and leaving it to go off for 6 hours. I'm pleased to say that upon winding the vice open, the shape finally held!


Now it was time to tackle something I have been putting off for months; the windows. Ordinarily I would take a lazy approach and cover a piece of clear plastic window (packaging from "Wills" sheets) with adhesive label (to form glazing bars), and stick it behind the opening. With the carriage, the balsa wood shell was too thick to get this looking correct, so I somehow had to make some flush(ish) glazing. Bearing in mind the openings for most of the windows were only 10mm x 5mm, there was going to be no easy way about it!


Whilst initially planning to carefully cut a piece of clear plastic to shape and jam it in, I realised that the edges of the windows were not very square. In order to smarten it up, I therefore decided to form a frame out of some very thin plasticard (sorry, I don't have details on the thickness). Thin strips of this were cut off with a craft knife, and using the chopper tool (that I usually use for cutting up lollipop sticks), they were quickly cut to length.

With steady hands, a metal ruler, and thin-nosed pliers, I was eventually able to persuade the glue not to stick everything to my fingers!


Thankfully I had the foresight not to cut out every single window of the carriage; so there were only 5 small windows, 2 slightly bigger ones, and a final large window to build. Despite the fiddly (to put it mildly!) nature of the work, I only messed up one of them (which was soon rebuilt).


It's fair to say that the results aren't going to stand up to close scrutiny, but it looks a damn sight better than my usual adhesive label method.


Above: The finished windows all packed onto a flat wagon (I've no idea why, I can't think of a worse way of transporting glass than on an unsprung 4 wheeled wagon!)


And finally, the two sections of roof were hastily covered in a grey paint. Don't worry, this is only a base coat; the strips of sandpaper in the background will be laid over the top of it and overlapped to suggest roofing felt. It can then be painted a more suitable grey colour, and roof details such as a stovepipe and guttering added.

Also of note in the shot above are the recently painted fence posts that are ready for installation around the carriage. Tacking the beading wire onto the posts may prove tricky, but that's for another day! As always, these posts are simply thinly cut-up lollipop sticks.

So, still lots of work to do on the carriage; but it's getting there!

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