So said Hudson, Lord Glendoric's tireless Butler and railway enthusiast last week when a new and eagerly awaited coach arrived at the Estate.

The coach is based upon the one supplied to the Sand Hutton 18" gauge railway by Hudsons. It is by no means identical; I wanted to capture as much character of the original as possible, but knew that my current skills would not allow me to create a faithful replica. The main differences include a much larger "open" section than on the Sand Hutton one, a different pattern of balcony ironwork and different entrance door arrangements.

An early decision was made to use a scale of 1" to the foot. The main reason was to keep as much of the minimum gauge character of the coach as possible on my 45mm track, but it also made the arithmetic much easier when translating the drawings from Mark Smithers' book. It has however resulted in a coach that is 32" long!

The accompanying photos show the general methods of construction. I started with the frames, which are made of aluminimum channel sourced from the local DIY store. At the moment, the frames sit on a couple of surplus Bachmann G-Scale bogies with some undersized Sierra Valley wheels; however, these will be replaced in the near future by a pair of Ozark trucks with larger wheels from Gary; these trucks are as close as you can get to the originals without scratch-building, and the combined weight of the whitemetal trucks and Gary's wheels will bring some welcome extra stability. The balcony ironwork is fabricated from K&S brass sections, which have been bonded to the aluminimum frames.

The body is constructed from plywood and strip-wood, and can be lifted off the frames for maintenance. The 3rd class open section has been carpeted with doll's house material, and the private closed saloon has been furnished with a Persian rug, antique chairs and a folding chess table from the local doll's house supplier.

The roof, as ever, caused the most difficulty. Strip-wood stringers were placed on top of the coach "bulkheads", running the length of the coach. Due to the length of the coach however, they were tending to sag; to correct this, square section wood was glued under each stringer. Paper-thin wood veneer from the local hobby shop was then cut slightly oversize, and then glued to the stringers. I use outdoor grade white wood glue for all of my bodywork, but parts need to be held under pressure for at least 10 minutes to get a decent bond. This is difficult to do with roofs, as the complex curves make clamping very difficult. My solution is to use spots of gel-type Cyano adhesive ("Superglue") to hold the springy veneer in place whilst the white glue sets. After setting overnight, the veneer was then trimmed with sharp scissors and sandpaper until it was flush with the body. This was then covered with cotton sheet to represent a canvas-covered roof; undiluted white glue was initially used to stick the cotton to the veneer, and then a 50/50 water and glue mix was brushed on from above.

For finishing, the frames were sprayed with red primer, followed by gloss-black from the local car spares shop. To get some light weathering effects, I ground down a dark brown artist's chalk on some sandpaper, and then brushed it over the frames. This was then fixed with some car lacquer from the same source as the paint. The body was brushed with three layers of "Japlac" navy blue paint, and once dry rub-down lettering was applied.

As ever, I am using "tow-bar" style couplers. The coach ends overhang alarmingly on even the most moderate of the Glendoric's curves, but after replacing the Bachmann wheels with the SVE ones, it can be pushed through the LGB second radius switches without any hint of derailment.

So, the Glendoric now has plenty of passenger capacity during the summer season, and for those who may have been wondering...yes, Hudson the Butler's first name was Robert!

Peter Bakke