Railcar Doodles

It's been a bit of a quiet spell at the workbench of late, but this week I have at least been thinking about doing something, which is a start. I was given a Kato 11-105 bogie chassis for my birthday back in February and have been trying to find a use for it, maybe something a bit novel (for me anyway)... so I started to think about railcars.

Now there aren't many small 15" gauge railcars about, I did consider a 'caricature' version of the Ratty's 'Silver Jubilee' in the style of David Malton's 3D printed 009 models but even that would be pushing it. Then I saw photos on Facebook* that reminded me of a very obscure 15" gauge machine, the Minirail railcar that appeared at the Axe & Lyme railway and went on to Dudley Zoo. These online photos, and one rediscovered in a copy of 'Narrow Gauge Times' that I bought during lockdown, gave enough clues to dimensions, plus I relied on the prior knowledge that most Minirail items are 3ft wide.

As one of my friends said, it does rather look like two 1950s caravans back-to-back! I did put together a drawing but it isn't quite right around the cab side windows and maybe needs a little more overall in length.

There is a minor drawback to this scheme that will only make sense if you see a photo of the real thing (and I cannot share one here for copyright reasons). The Minirail railcar was actually a 4w vehicle, and the Kato chassis has bogies. The wheelbase on the real thing must have been 6-7ft which is a bit longer to scale than the Kato 4w chassis, so the bogie chassis does make a little sense.

But my main issue was that having got over my curiosity about it I wasn't really that bothered about building it. So I started to look for other ideas. I remembered that I had a pair of damaged Avalon line bogie coach sides that Peter Leadley kindly passed on a while ago, so I started to look at what might be feasible with them. One side is complete but the other is quite damaged, however a neat little railcar could result, maybe a battery unit to excuse the lack of engine bay. As a further alternative I part-drew a slightly longer version based on an A1 models chassis frame I have, with a short snout of a bonnet. I am actually less enamoured by that version if I am honest.

Even if the railcar version never gets built I can see a mini coach being built based on that drawing...

Colin

*the photos are in the Narrow Gauge & Miniature Railways of the British Isles group - you may need to be a member to see them.