B.F. Dillingham's Private Car

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I started building coach 64 around March of this year

I decided to start from the bottom up so to speak, and do the trucks first. I will include some photos of my progress, but since I am planing on casting the side frames in white metal or resin to save time, I will skip the mold making and casting process's and just show construction.



These are the trucks that I will be making from scratch.



After makng a prototype of the sideframes I made a mold and casted the first 5 sets shown above. The wheels are from Sierra Valley.



Here is the second pair of finished trucks assembled, painted and tested for coach 64.



With that finished, I moved on to the side walls. I will be building the window casings separage from the walls.

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Moving on to the window casements.



I drew up these shop drawings for the casements prior to milling up the wood.



I test fitted the first casement into the sides to make sure I was moving in the right direction and then moved on to the sash.



I used 1/32" styrene laminated to 1/64" Koa for the sash. The purest in me hated doing that, but the 3/64" Koa sash was just too fragile so I figured since the outside was paint grade, I shouldn't have any problems with using styrene from an esthetic point of view.



I used modeling clay for the glazing putty and acetate for the windows.

They cleaned up great with a little alchol and a cotton swab.



So I moved on to adding the letterboard, trim and casings to the side. The image above shows me testing the ends with the sides in place.

[Guest]

Lovely scale work you are doing there.

When I used to do windows, rather than acetate, I would go to a good photographic shop and order a box of glass slide mounting frames. I would get the ones for 2 1/4" square format. After stipping them down carefully, you would get two perfect pieces of real glass, about 2 1/2" square out of each mount, and it was about 0.025" thick. Easy to cut with a carbide scriber and tough as old boots. It doesn't discolour with age, and doesn't scratch when cleaning.

John

[Guest]

Thanks for the tip John. Is there an online resource? Our photo shops are pretty basic. I tried to get some cotton gloves for handling lenses and photos there and they had no idea what I was talking about.

Lovely scale work you are doing there.When I used to do windows, rather than acetate, I would go to a good photographic shop and order a box of glass slide mounting frames. I would get the ones for 2 1/4" square format. After stipping them down carefully, you would get two perfect pieces of real glass, about 2 1/2" square out of each mount, and it was about 0.025" thick. Easy to cut with a carbide scriber and tough as old boots. It doesn't discolour with age, and doesn't scratch when cleaning.

John

[Guest]

Here are a couple to give you some idea

452701 Gepe 6x7 Medium Format Slide Mounts (54 x 68) with Anti-Newton Glass, Pack of 10

Roberts New & Used Digital and Film Cameras, Photography Supply and Electronics

A google search for '6x7 glass slide mounts' should provide a few more

John

[Guest]

Thanks John, I was doing the search for slide mounting frames and getting a lot of unrelated results.

[Guest]

Not a good shot, but it shows the truss rod plate I made.



I pre-painted and lettered the sides, and glued them up to the ends. I decided to add the interior after I complete the substructure and the roof, so I have a better understanding of the dimensions of the interior. I found that I could not trust the drawings I have to be accurate after discovering a 1/32" descripency on the ends.



I used blue tape to hold the ends to the sides while the glue set. Unfortunately when I removed the tape, I also removed some of the paint and wood on the corners of the reat as you can see in the above images.



Finally completed the substructure. Only took 2 days. Most of the time was in laying it out. Coach 64 is slightly different from the other OR&L coaches because of the observation deck and because it is only 36 feet long.

I didn't have any plans what so ever, so what I did was to rely partially on the layout given in the Master Class article about building a Carter Brothers Coach, and partly from what I can see if the under carriage on some photos Jeff sent of coach 2 s trucks. From those two items, I was able to come up with something, that while not being strictly prototypical, is probably pretty close or it least convincing and at least functional.

Some of the difference between the M.C. article plans can be seen in the thickness of the lumber I used, and the center 2 stringers which are 3/4" apart (same as the plans) but go straight through to the other end of the substructure (which is the way they appear to do on the coach 2 images).

I used walnut because of its stability and strength. To join the pieces I used tight bond wood glue and regular lap joints. I reversed the joing on the middle stringers to which is what I think the coach builders might have done.

That notch in the upper left hand corner of the image is for the steps on the observation deck. You are looking at the top of the substructure from the front of the car. The front platform is not present, because from what I can tell from the images I have, it cantilevers off the substructure, underneath the end wall. I will add the cantilevers, the front deck, and the bolsters and then finally the subfloor, an overlay of black construction paper and then the koa flooring on top of that.