When you have had a layout for a few years you get used to its limitations of operation. You try and use visiting rolling stock from time to time to give a different atmosphere but basically it is still the same limited layout, and there comes a point at which you either extend it or begin to look around for a change. I reached this point recently with the Sidleigh & Callington layout (featured in the November 1999 issue of the Gazette) and an article in a magazine on the early days of the Bodmin & Wadebridge Railway caught my eye. I thought it might be fun to try and model some of the original rolling stock; fortunately several specimens have been preserved and there are also some quite good photographs available - amazing as the 1860s were early days for photography as well as railways.

Research
The first outing in quest of data was to the Railway Museum at York and there in the reserve collection are a couple of the original passenger carriages, plus some very fine 5in gauge models. Although the reserve collection is very cramped, I was able to get some good close-up photographs of the bodywork and suspension of these vehicles; the latter is interesting in that the leaf springs are inside the axleboxes. The second excursion was, of course, to Bodmin where both the staff of the Bodmin & Wenford Railway and of the town's museum were very helpful and unearthed some useful old photographs and sketches of early rolling stock. None of the places visited had drawings of the carriages or wagons, but I was fortunate in coming across a virtually broadside photograph of two of the vehicles; I enlarged these to what I reckoned was correct scale for O gauge and then printed directly on to cornflakes box cardboard (prior to laminating). It was then fairly straightforward to cut out the sides and window apertures.

Construction
I had previously tried using plastic card for locomotive construction (the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe featured in the February 2000 Gazette was a good example) but I thought it would be nice this time to try laminated card for the Bodmin & Wenford stock. I found that cornflakes packets laminated by Unibond in two-ply was reasonably strong for the sides and ends of vehicles, and where extra strength was required (eg the floor) a three-ply version was used. In any case a third ply was used to form the raised parts of panel work. When I belonged to the Dunstable MRC I think I got known for my economic forms of construction and these carriages are no exception. Other materials used were pilchard tins for roofs and basic underframes, lolly sticks for buffer beams, footboards, seats and transverse floor supports, pencil stumps for dumb buffers and filed-down nail heads for door handles and scrap brass bits for levers. Because the Bodmin & Wadebridge line was end-to-end, vehicles never needed to be turned and they used single-ended couplings with a chain on one end of each vehicle and a hook on the other end, and so I have followed the same pattern although I am exploring the possibility of using discreet Jackson auto-couplings to save hand intervention.

When laminating the cardboard sheets, it is important to have printed sides facing each other and then to place the joined sheets under a fairly heavy weight (I used an old atlas);

At first I thought I could get away with not modelling the leaf springs on the underframe as they are to a certain extent hidden by the footboards, but I gradually realised that they are in fact a distinctive feature of these vehicles. So I formed the springs in microstrip, again by lamination (using Liquid Poly) but this time forming a curve as they set. The axleboxes are wooden dummies as the axles run in internal bearings (made up either from expended ball-pen tubes or from pilchard tins - as are the external irons). I could not obtain wheels in O gauge small enough to go under the carriages so I bought a packet of Hornby 00 spoked wheels and mounted them to O gauge on fresh axles made of brass rod. I wondered how well the narrower treads would run through points, but a recent run on the CSGOG's test track was reasonably encouraging. A member suggested trying to get some 7mm narrow-gauge wheels which have broader treads and this I shall pursue.

Freight
As the Bodmin & Wenford Railway was constructed to carry more freight than passengers, I thought I ought to make some wagons. Again without drawings it was a case of making the most of the photographs available and this was not too difficult. The same materials were used for construction - mainly laminated cardboard and lolly sticks - and the most tricky bit was getting the angle of the ends and sides right. The base of the sides has to be narrow enough so as not to foul the inside tops of the wheels. It was a case of trial and error until it looked about right, so the first three wagons have slightly different angles.