I decided to populate Much Wittering with short 'excursion' coaches due to restricted platform lengths and the fact that full length coaches look a bit silly on tight bends.

Immediately, the auction prices for such things went through the roof.
As far as I know, the record for one of these little beasts is £60 incl. postage on eBay.

Gaugemaster tell me that the moulds are lost.

Crazy!

Yikes!    That's a lot of money.  Maybe they'll find the moulds one day.   

They've been going for crazy prices for quite a while. I've managed to collect a few but I also picked up a set of the Shredded Wheat 'promo' ones for a tenner (with free push along engine). They're made from a cheaper plastic and you have to replace the couplings, but once you repaint them and stick a bit of clear plastic in for glazing they're pretty good 4 wheel coaches as they're made from the same moulds.

Another option is to buy the far cheaper Arnold 4 and 6 wheel coaches that go on e-bay (Fleischmann ones can be good too) and either repaint them for 'near enough' or use the chassis as the basis for a bit of kit bashing (keep the roof and a fairly straight forward plasticard box and you're not far off).

Even when you get an original one, they're very old GF design, so it has those nasty couplings with the spring built into the plastic of the coupling itself.

First company to make new moulds will make a packet I suspect. Unless e-bay are bribing them more to avoid doing new ones.

Yes - I have played with various ideas, including cutting down some full length coaches which, at two thirds length with eight wheels don't look too bad.

It does seem these are far more popular than one might expect, given that they're apparently not based on any real prototype.

Perhaps it goes to prove that some new 4-wheel coaches, based on real pre-grouping types could be a seller.

You can of course opt for something like the Worsley Works kits. They do things like the 45' Caledonian Coaches.

R E Faust

Maybe somebody out there is working on coaches to suite the Dapol terrier? I hope so.

Sadly the four GWR liveried 4-wheelers I recently sold on ebay did not get close to £60.00 each...more like £10.00 each... They were in good condition, and just goes to prove that you really have to pick your moment when selling stuff like this.

In answer to the question about suitable carriages for the Terrier, if you don't mind building kits then try these from Etched Pixels...

http://www.etchedpixels.co.uk/

I have a set awaiting me to pluck up the courage to start building them...

Sunday appears to be the magic day for e-bay sales. If you can time your sale to end on a Sunday when everyone's able to devote time to sniping it appears you're more likely to get a good price bumping battle for your stuff.

If you can get those Shredded Wheat coaches cheaper than the "proper" ones:
I've just started doing the conversion of Shredded Wheat coaches to the Stove-R 6-wheeled chassis. - It's not a trivial task as it involves quite a lot of cutting and filing - during which the hair-thin coupling spring wires can fly off and disappear (fortunately only temporarily in my case - but they have become bent out of shape and are incredibly difficult to re-shape! I may have to ask Dapol for some spares). You also need to cut glazing strips to fit inside the coaches and some spacers to hold them against the sides as glueing is a nigh on impossible once the bodies are painted inside and out! Also you need to use different types of glue to attach the weight and body to the chassis, as the chassis is not polystyrene. Once I've finished the job I'll report again - but it could be some time as I don't have a lot of free time at the moment. There was someone doing this conversion on the NGS stand at TINGS last September - I was hoping they'd write an article in the Journal but one hasn't appeared to date ...

The various Arnold,Roco and Fleischmann 4 & 6 wheel coaches are usually cheaper than the Farish ones on eBay and are all generally better quality. Feasibly you could either do a little bit of a repaint for a 'near enough' local train, do a bit of kit bashing with them or just use the chassis with a Farish lid made from hacked up bogie coaches for cheaper than buying the Farish 4 wheelers.

i was lucky and picked up 4 gwr 4wheelers at a good price on ebay recently worked out around £10 each