2nd/3rd Blue Carriages R40102 & R40439

[What About The Bee]

LT&SR_NSE, in another thread, you asked:

Having fairly conclusively demonstrated that [the Booth] curtained carriage is a first class design…

I wonder if you’d be interested in researching what the later 2nd Class carriages (built to enable originals to become 3rd Class) actually looked like?

÷÷÷÷

I will begin with a statement. 

Hornby had a choice when deciding what to design for these carriages.  They had a choice between what was actually on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway and what is at the museum.  

Hornby did know what was on the railway  https://uk.hornby.com/community/blog-and-news/engine-shed/expanding-stephensons-rocket-train-pack-announcing-launch-lmr-third-class-carriage
You will note the "George Stephenson Drawing" in the Hornby article, as well as parts of Ackermann aquatints.

Hornby did measure what was at the museum, the images of that are in the Hornby article.  The museum carriages were made for the centenary celebration of the LMR.

So what follows will not be a disection of Hornby's commercial choice to reproduce the museum carriages.   Moreover, I am happy with Hornby's carriages, full stop.

The "George Stephenson Drawing"

The drawing appears in William Sloane Kennedy, Wonders and Curiosities of the Railway, 1884.  In the text, Kennedy credits two individuals.  J. B.Winslow, of Boston and E.H. Talbott.  We will summarily dispense with Talbott, he was merely the publisher of The Railway Age periodical, who established the copyright.  Yet J.B. Winslow is far more interesting.  He was an agent of the Boston and Lowell Railway (in the US), chartered in 1830.  Winslow claimed that the drawings were presented to him by George Stephenson in 1835. Winslow stated that they (probably) represented the LMR 2nd class carriage of 1832.  The provenance of the drawing is therefore very good.  It is important to note that Railway Age stated that the drawing shown was redrawn from the original.  The signature may or may not have been on the original.

Presented here is the highest resolution image, for inspection.

You will note that on the right hand side, the image is a cut away, revealing the seats and interior configuration.  

Comparative Analysis

There are 3 main portrayals.  The Ackermann aquatints, the Stephenson Drawing and the Hornby Museum Carriage.

Given the probable date of 1832 for the Stephenson drawing, I selected the Ackermann prints of 1831 for analysis.

With three carriages, we have three comparisons.  Ackermann to Stephenson Drawing.  Ackermann to Hornby Museum Carriage.  Stephenson Drawing to Hornby Museum Carriage.  In each comparison, the topmost drawing is made transparent.  The lengths are set equal and aligned.

Key Observations

1) The stirrups to mount the carriages are loops, not a step on a rod.  This is rational.  The museum step on a rod is nearly as fragile as the Hornby model representation of it.  It would not, in actual use, be a robust solution.  There should be a stirrup, not a step on a rod.  
2) The Hornby Museum carriage wheel base is too long.  Carriages on the LMR had to fit on those tiny turntables.  The track length on the turntables was 2 meters.  I scale the wheel base on the Stephenson Drawing to be 70½" (1.8 meters).  When the flanges are included, we can see it fits, with little to spare.  This comment applies to all Hornby LMR waggons and carriages, with the exception of the 'common railway waggon' R60164.
3) The curvature at the top of each compartment is continuous, not two curves and a flat, portrayed by the Museum Carriages.  Note that the Ackermann prints match that curve with exceptional precision.  That means the top of the door is curved, not flat.
4) Seating.  Passengers did NOT ride standing up on the LMR.  Every passenger had a seat.  The Stephenson Drawing shows seats.  The Ackermann drawings do show the occasional standing passenger, yet the passengers next to them are seated.   Some passengers stood by choice, therefore, in front of a seat.
5) The Museum Carriage is too tall comparatively.  Once the museum carriages were designed as stand up carriages, the walls had to be tall enough to prevent passengers from falling out.  They are ~ 1 foot too tall.

How can I make the Hornby Museum Carriages be more like the Stephenson Drawing?

The first and most obvious thing to change is seating.  Add it.  Seating should be anatomically correct for OO passengers.  The passengers on the interior dividing walls were seated on box cabinets, the inside of the box used for luggage, with doors on the outside.  If you examine the detailed Stephenson Drawing, you will see the hinges, handles and door outlines.  The passengers seated at the front and back are on cantilevered seats.  Sketching them up, we have

Placing them into a quick sketch of the Hornby shell, we have

This compares to the Stephenson Drawing

The length and top corners are matched.  The seat depth from the top corners are matched.  To prevent the OO passengers feet from dangling like an infant in a high chair, a false floor is installed under the seats.  This will be very difficult to detect from normal viewing distances unless you measure the heights or are very observant.

One subtle difference imposed by the Hornby Museum Carriage model is the door width.  The Ackermann Aquatints and the Stephenson Drawing show a narrower door.  My seats are slightly too shallow, such that the front edge of the seats do not conflict with the Hornby theoretical door opening, but not by much!

What about the wheelbase and the stirrups?

The stirrups could be made from metal.  They might be tricky to attach to the Hornby chassis.  Fundamentally, Hornby could refine the model, abandoning the museum representation and moving towards the Stephenson drawing.  That would be a commercial choice for Hornby.  One I cannot and will not make for Hornby.  If it were me, I would focus on fleet additions, rather than correcting deficiencies.

Hornby could release seating units, afterall, they weren't terribly hard to CAD.  

I have not printed mine yet, but certainly, I intend to.  I've realized that Shapeways installs fixed overhead costs on each order.  Thus, ganging multiple designs on one order amortizes my expense.  The seats will be ganged with the cattle waggon & pig waggon prints.  I am considering the sheep waggon doors as well.  

Bee
 

[LTSR_NSE]

Fascinating as always Bee - bravo.

I completely agree with you that the museum reproductions were a perfectly reasonable & logical way to introduce the range.

The subsequent Royal Mail & Booth coaches appear to indicate a willingness to progress towards more period accurate designs as the range increases.

Hopefully Hornby’s future plans will include producing examples of the covered-but-not-enclosed* ** ‘replacement second class’ coaches.
(which LMR built when they wanted to downgrade the original design, that you describe above, to third class.)

* I wonder if genuine designs exist (like for Booth) or only the artist impressions?

** providing OO material/structural compromises allowed such designs!

[LTSR_NSE]

‘Replacement second class’ design were apparently built around 1844 & possibly were actually an enclosed type - therefore maybe the (originally first class) Booth design was repurposed?

[What About The Bee]

@LTSR_NSEHi!

Wood notes that the upright rods were made of iron.   Brass rod, suitably blackened, is stiff enough to hold up a plastic canopy.  I note that brass rod is commercially available at 0.3 mm  diameter, which will provide that spider web like look.  That's equivalent to 0.9 inches in OO.   It does not appear to be an overwhelming challenge, at all.  

In so far as mechanical drawings like the Stephenson Drawing, there are a few.  Mostly, however, there are simply artist drawings, with some artists more adept than others.  I personally think this adds to the allure and mystery.  We will likely never know any of these waggons or carriages in a perfect sense.  Moreover, they were evolving rapidly, meaning anything we know is just a moment in time.  

I've still a bunch of very early carriages that were revealed in the newspaper search.  Stay tuned!

I must unfortunately burst the bubble that the Booth 1st Curtain Carriages may have been used in 1844.  All the curtain carriages seem totally eradicated by 1834.  Perhaps the chassis was re-used.  But the spring loaded buffers and draw pins of those chassis also were revised and re-invented in the later 1830s, making it very unlikely that any parts of the Booth 1st Curtain Carriages survived to 1844.  It is certainly possible that these 2nd/3rd blue carriages survived.  They appear on the Manchester and Leeds Railway drawings (1845) as well as London and Birmingham Railway drawings.  As a type, the British public well accepted them.  It is my belief that the new, enclosed 2nd carriages that came about with Parliamentary trains were simply constructed from the ground up new.  There would be little incentive to destroy a functional 2nd blue carriage, when it could be simply downgraded to 3rd without effort.  Your mileage may vary, of course!

Bee

[What About The Bee]

By August, 1831, the LMR had received several complaints of burnt clothing.  It seems embers were being lofted into the air from the locomotive chimney.  Those embers then landed on the passengers in the open second class carriages, the carriages of the type discussed so far in this thread.

The LMR ordered canopies to be fitted to second class carriages.  We have several depictions by Ackermann and others, showing these canopies.  

My current accessory kit for R40102 includes seats and now, a canopy.  The first thing to get correct is the side elevation of the canopy, relative to the G. Stephenson drawing and the Ackermann aquatint 

All three overlayed onto one showing the canopy, seats and Hornby shell on top of the Stephenson drawing and the Ackermann aquatint.  

The posts are referenced down to the interior of the Hornby Shell.  The posts are on hand brass rod, 0.57 mm in radius.  

In isometric view, I think it looks quite the part.  Colors right now are arbitrary, to help in the CAD development.

Bee

Edited March 8 by What About The Bee

[LTSR_NSE]

Looking extremely dapper - the isometric view really brings them to life!

Is it known what the real canopies were made of?  (e.g. canvas?)

How thick will you need to print them to avoid fragility?

[What About The Bee]

Hi @LTSR_NSE

The early canopies were, I believe, a heavy duty material, like the tarpaulins.  This obviously did not stand up to the elements or the thrashing of wind caused by travel.  The one modeled certainly appears to be tarp or canvas.

Later, they went with hard a hard roof.  Here is one in Wood, albeit not necessarily for the LMR. 

As far as the canopy on the model, I am going to try 1.14 mm in thickness.  The floors on the cattle waggons were ~1.6mm and they seemed quite robust in the same material. The thing is, I do not know if that is too thin.  Until I get a better understanding of Shapeways, much of this is simply an experiment.  One I am enjoying, to be frank.  

Bee

Edited March 8 by What About The Bee
Did you spot the brake on the right hand side??

[LTSR_NSE]

@What About The Bee - This price discount might be helpful towards this project… 

https://uk.hornby.com/products/open-carriage-pack-containing-3x-open-carriages-stephensons-rocket-r40102

Edited March 14 by LTSR_NSE

[What About The Bee]

Thank you @LTSR_NSE  I did see that.  I may just purchase some, although I already possess a fair number of Hornby's issue

Bee

[What About The Bee]

When I took my measurements of my R40102 carriages, I made a horrifically bad assumption.  I assumed that the vertical walls were a constant uniform thickness.  In real life, the dimensional lumber used to create the walls would obviously have created uniform thicknesses.  What I did not count on was that the molded walls would be thicker at the bottom of the wall than at the top. 

This meant that a seating unit would start going into a compartment, but would NOT seat itself all the way down onto the floor of that compartment.

With nothing to loose, I got some 150 grit aluminum oxide sandpaper and place it on a flat surface.  Pressing the sides of the seating unit onto the sandpaper, I took a few strokes.  It was undoubtedly cutting!!  I could see dust from the seating unit left behind.  This was the only good news of the day.  I could abrade fine detail plastic with aluminum oxide sandpaper.

With one end seating unit fitted in one end compartment, I thought, I should try the other end compartment of the same carriage with the sanded unit. 

That is when I discovered that the two end compartments were different. I pulled out all units I had and found it fit some but not all.  It was a random distribution fitment.  Which puzzled me.  Perhaps the Hornby mold is for multiple carriages at once, and they are slightly different to account for mold release?  I really struggle to understand this randomness in the Hornby carriages.

I continued sanding until that one end seating unit until it fit any end compartment.  I measured that one end seating unit and made all other end seating units the same size.  At last, all end seating units fit any end seating compartment.  Yippee.

I did the same for the middle seating units, making them fit any middle compartment. 

While the amount of material wasn't huge, it was up to 0.3 mm (0.012"). 

And then the penny dropped. When sanding away material from the sides, the holes in the seating units for the posts were NOT moving inboard.  They were being abraded away.  The posts for the canopy did fit into the corners when I was done, but it was now an extremely tight fit.  Further, they were no longer at the proper vertical orientation, leading to misalignment with the holes for the posts in the canopy.  I managed to get the canopy on, but it was a struggle.

Actual Results

https://youtube.com/shorts/ig3gEQiqPDQ?si=O0vr1AlfydGLO92Y

https://youtube.com/shorts/W-EO831zEjY?si=bwLLSMreB0Okw_gE

While the appearance is reasonable, I can do better.  I've spent an extraordinary amount of rework in CAD, accommodating the new dimensions found by sanding away material.  The canopy and seating units were all changed in CAD to account for this emperical fitment.

There will obviously be another pass on these carriages.   The current canopy units are probably a scrap.  I'll keep the other seating units, the change will be invisible to the naked eye, so with a dash of paint...

Bee

[LTSR_NSE]

When 1 reaction is too limiting…

Whilst I thoroughly enjoyed reading the latest update on this fantastic project - I also wish to express commiserations to its developer @What About The Bee for his disappointment.

Edited April 9 by LTSR_NSE

[96RAF]

@What About The Bee - at that stage I would have bailed out and gone down the pub. I applaud your skills and application. Good luck to further progression.

[What About The Bee]

Perseverance.  Determination.

While I described the error in vivid detail, it really is a minor setback.  I wanted to portray the foibles of retrofitting Hornby kit, of which there are many.  The designers at Hornby, in interviews, mention the utility of a 3D printer.  The problem I encountered is fitment, similar to the designers at Hornby.  They likely spin revisions far quicker than I do and encounter less problems than I do. They have the actual CAD models after all. But in the end, it is just getting the parts to fit together under uncertainty.  Anyone who tries to make things encounters this problem.

I haven't given up by a long shot.  Nay, Nay!  The bulk of the LMR fleet awaits me.  This problem was a bump in the road, but not the end of the ride.  Perseverance and determination.  When something doesn't work the way I want it to, take a step back.  Understand why.  Take corrective action.  Try again.  

And yes, a visit to the pub, to let the ideas percolate subconsciously may be in order.  😉

Bee