LNER Teak Carriage bogie dimensions?

[XA85]

 

'Afternoon all, hopefully I've put this in the right place. I'm about to embark on a new project and am seeking a little assistance. I've been planning on scratch building a rake of coaches as I've been too satisfied with RTR Gresley Teak models and as I often work night shifts, I need something to do in the wee hours when I return home from work and everybody is still sleeping. So my question is, after a thorough hunt through google I've had much success in finding various plans of Gresley Teak carriages however the  biggest stumbling point has been trying to locate accurate dimensions of the bogies, all I've found are the repeated notes that the wheel base is 8'6". If anybody can provide further information to help me so I can get cracking on this project it would be much appreciated!

[martyn]

Why do you want the dimensions?
Gresley/LNER Bogies are available from Ultima/Etched Pixels and the N gauge Society as kits, and as spares from Dapol. It will be a lot easier than trying to scratchbuild them  . MTK used to do a plastic version, but I believe the moulds for these was lost a long time ago 
I used one or other versions of these bogies listed on all my kitbuilt or etched side replacement models.
See their webpages for types offered.
HTH
Martyn

[XA85]

Martyn, thank you kindly for your reply and the recommendation. I'm looking for the dimensions because I'm a bit mad and like a challenge, and as fiddly as it may be, starting out with a few scratch built bogies (I have a few ideas for construction methods) seems a good place to start with the project. I've thought up an idea as to how to work out the dimensions since my original post, however a quick experiment is needed (which I'm working on at the moment). I'll update with the results.

[Newportnobby]

Welcome to the forum XA85

I'm looking for the dimensions because I'm a bit mad

You'll fit in well here although many of us might consider life's too short to get down to the nitty gritty of making bogies. Each to their own and I'm sure what you produce will be admired.

[XA85]

You'll fit in well here although many of us might consider life's too short to get down to the nitty gritty of making bogies. Each to their own and I'm sure what you produce will be admired.

'ello! Good know.

The experiment: I located a pdf assembly guide for some Kemilway teak Gresley carriages which contains a variety of detailed drawings, including profile drawings of bogie variants used on teak carriages! Link for reference. Its a fairly high resolution document and page 5 has a suitable diagram for reference. I copied this into Adobe Illustrator and made a blank of the bogie profile. Knowing that the distance between the centre point of both wheel sets is 8'6", I placed a guide between these two points and locked the silhouette of the bogie profile I'd mocked up to this guide. From there, its possible in Illustrator to scale the image once the correct measurement is known. Now, how to work out 8'6" in 1:148... then in millimeters? Mathematics was never my strong point. Funny that, since a position I held in a previous job was to monitor stock adjustments, loss, and figure out where the odd pennies were disappearing to. Welp, use a handy online conversion tool of course!
This then gave me a correct reference point to scale my blank template to. Once I had that, hit print and send the digital pixies through the air to a printer in t'other room and tape the template to bit of plasticard. A dusty few minutes later spent with some wee files to see if this was possible and I have half of the bogie profile, although not so accurate as the template fell off so I just eyeballed it as this was a test.



I may have got the measurement a little out, seems a tad too big.

I think the next course of action is to rejig the template, stack some plasticard together and drill pilot holes, then carefully file away the excess. With several sheets processed at once I can get a batch of profiles done at once and ensure they have the same cut. Thankfully my father recently purchased a small pillar drill (model ship enthusiast) which will prove to be a useful tool in this exercise.