Dapol GWR DMU railmotor

[D605Eagle]

what is that dirty great terracotta moulding behind the 3rd window from the right?

[Lysander]

That is a raised section of the interior seat unit, moulded that way to cover the large fly-wheel equipped can motor. When I'm able to provide a link to a more detailed review, you'll see this in better detail together with photos of the interior and the motor.

Tony

[Bigmet]

If this were a model that interested me, 'the plan' would be to saw out the bulge, and see what it looks like. If the motor was still too instrusive, try a smaller substitute - a shaft drive makes this very easy. Once happy, reconstruct the missing seats as far as possible, then paint everything below the seat cushions a dark matt floor shade to hide the interior bits and bobs.

[Bufferstop]

Actually the big lump of terra-cotta plastic is the lavatory compartment fitted to No's 10, 11 and 12 at an extra cost of £70 per unit! The drawing doesn't reproduce well, but the lavatory compartment is marked. It doesn't have an outside window as it covers the sliding door pocket. It is just about discernible in the pre-delivery photo.
drawing by John Williams, on Flickr

No 11 by John Williams, on Flickr
Both images from the book "The History of the Great Western A.E.C. Diesel Railcars, by Colin Judge. ISBN 978-1-906419-11-0
Without dismantling it the motor is beneath the compartment floor and only raises the floor level slightly. If it has a flywheel it can't be any bigger than the motor and probably doubles as the coupling for the cardan shaft. The terra cotta rendering of the plastic is another lighting effect, it is more brownish than it appears in the photo, just as you would expect a wooden panel to look. It definitely invites the addition of a driver and some passengers, it's just about as spartan as the original AEC interior. Well they were bus builders

[Lysander]

Almost right. Dapol have used the position of the lavatory to raise the moulding to cover the motor and flywheel.

From the non-lavatory side


From the other side


The second shot shows the relative height of the bulge to the seats. Painting the glazing - rather than the full-height bit of the moulding - off white would help greatly and I may well do it when I have decided how much to modify the interior.

Tony

[Bufferstop]

The photo shows the window in the outer leaf of the door pocket to be clear glass and I suspect a solid sheet of ply as the rear wall of the cubicle. The biggest difference you could make to the inside, is probably the hardest to do, reproduce the patterned moquette used on the seat coverings there's a black and white picture of it in the book but no hint as to the colours. It may well have been the same as used in other coaching stock. The offset motor is most prototypical, not so the cardan shaft which went to the outside of the axleboxes on the right hand side, can't see anyone rushing to model that arrangement. The Swindon drawing my father showed me was for an inboard shaft and was the design adopted for the first gen BR railcars, which begs the question were the GWR planning another series at the time of Nationalisation.

[D605Eagle]

Actually the big lump of terra-cotta plastic is the lavatory compartment fitted to No's 10, 11 and 12 at an extra cost of £70 per unit!

Thanks for that. I knew it wasn't for the motor as its full height of the window.

[Lysander]

The full height screening on one side does represent the lavatory compartment. However, whilst we will never know, I think it highly unlikely that such a basic representation would have been designed it that way had it not formed part of the motor bulge. It would have been far easier to have either misted the glazing at that point or created a more realistic moulding as is done for most coach manufacture these days.

Anyway, this is the promised link to a review and more photographs.

https://srmg.org.uk/news-blog/2017/11/6 ... ing-banana

Tony

[Bigmet]

Might make a good competition subject: best effort at modifying the interior to match the exterior standard.

[Lysander]

I'm certain that across various forums examples of detailed interiors will start to appear soon Bigmet. The real difficulty lies in the absence of coloured photographs or precise details of the interior fitments. I understand that the early cars were fitted out by Heals [or someone like that anyway]. The consensus in RMWeb favours olive green for the moquette seats. I'd be happy enough to go with that but would not worry about striping or mottling the finish as, at two feet, it'd be pretty much invisible anyway if done to scale. If not done to scale, it would look awful.

Passengers might help too but, given the size of the windows and the occupants extreme visibility, they would have to be painted very effectively if not to spoil the ship. This is not impossible of course.

The interior of the body sides look quite to be light in photos I've seen, but whether this is wood, painted metal or a precursor to Formica I'm uncertain. A pale cream or extremely light grey might be appropriate though. The flooring may have been a lino-type product but I'd probably use the flattest black I could find to avoid light reflecting off the motor bulge.

The toilet partition would appear to have some sort of Venetian blind behind the window. Closer photographs of that side would be helpful. There has also been speculation about the fitting of curtains or roller blinds to the other windows.

I guess some detailed research would be necessary before a half-decent job could be undertaken: all of this can be done, I'd just not rush into it personally. And all of this is based on using the existing moulding. 3-D printing might provide other, better options.

Tony

[Bufferstop]

In the absence of better photos, I doubt we'll be lucky enough to find any colour one, here's the interior of No12. The toilet compartment has I window with blind on the inside wall, so it still may have had a solid back. The seat cover pattern was quite bold. Roller blinds seem to have been mounted below the ventilators.
No12 interior by John Williams, on Flickr
Nos 10-12 were the only ones to have this arrangement of the lavatory compartment, the only others so equipped were no's 2, 3 and 4 which had two cubicles one either side forming a short corridor through to the buffet area. In the later series only the "twins" 35/36 and 37/38 had a single cubicle in 35 and 37 adjacent to the gangway through to the other car.

[Lysander]

That's a helpful photo. Thanks.

And by enlarging the photo you posted on No 11, you can clearly see the roller blinds fitted. The Venetian blind effect though, strongest at the lavatory section, is just that, a photographic effect which can be seen right across the entire picture when enlarged. That helps too.

Tony

[Bufferstop]

The venetian blind effect is the scanning process, taking a magnifier to the book reveals an single dark shade which I take to be veneered plywood, £70 for a toilet cubicle wouldn't have stretched too far even in 1935. It's worth trying to find a copy of the book, there are detailed descriptions, but little explicit mention of colours of the interiors, for example the floors were lino. No1 originally had curtains, Nos 2,3 and 4 had some kind of leatherette seating, but the photos of the interior show the same moquette as used in the later ones, changed at a refit. I suspect around the same time as the later ones entered service. No 4 is in the NRM and has had its interior panelling restored to the original condition. I saw it at Steam in Swindon the panelling is a triumph of art-deco veneering, the fittings on the buffet counter are chrome and copper, the one's in the twins were even grander.

[mjb1961]

Also bought one of these ,,,I opted for number 8'twin cities ,,I don't really know what if any differences between them ,,didn't realise they had fitted lights ! ,,looking forward to giving it a run ,,mjb

[Bufferstop]

The lights are a triumph of restraint, just like the real thing you can't see them in daylight and they are still pretty dim in the dark. They were a frequent sight on our local line, the buffet fitted ones on the Birmingham-Cardiff run then later on the shuttle between Stratford and Leamington, a job that was still being performed by the Bubble cars when I came to live here. I've found a photo of one of the later ones running round a ten compartment coach at Stratford.