I have been bodging brass bearings on my lathe and have now mounted a set of Dave Hammersley's lovely scale coach wheels into a pair of bogies for my G1MCo Mark One coaches. As you can hopefully see, they fit perfectly into the bogies, even to the extent of matching the brake blocks fitted into the bogies. On the left you can see a bogie with the original (albeit turned down) wheels.
I now need to re-fit a brass tie bar, I cut off the heavy castings supplied which look a bit lumpen and also have a tendency to bend in the centre.
In the background you can see the interior being re-glued back together, the partition windows and doors as supplied are inexplicably lacking in height as you can see, the white lower edges being where I have extended them. Ungluing the partition sides is a hell of a job requiring knives and brute force, I have since filled the various resulting "craters" you can see.
At the risk of being labelled a fingerpointing and fretting finescale fiddler, I struggle to see why G1MCo and now Accucraft produce these very good coaches with undersized wheels. Well OK, the scale wheels will limit the minimum radius, but from casual inspection they'll go around quite a tight curve before fouling the sole bars, certainly no problem on my line. But then again I suppose they'll have the bigger flanges which might cause further problems - so much for doing it to scale being "harder"
I need to add handrails inside the corridor and do a bit of painting, then I can put my "improved" body on to the completed chassis and have a more or less completed Mark 1 coach. Three more to go...
Looking on the bright side it is nice to be able to upgrade and improve a "basic" product to produce something a bit more personal.
Edit: A bit of paint now thrown around the bogies:
Simon