Moving Clarabelle

Many people have asked how easy it is to move a carriage like Clarabelle around the country so I thought I’d put together this photomontage of the last time we moved her from Western Sydney to Wellington back in 2005.

In short, it’s a relatively simple operation because Clarabelle (1072) is a Queensland carriage and they have a smaller loading gauge than NSW or Victorian Railways. That means that for Vic Rail or NSWGR carriages, they have to be taken off their bogies before being put on a truck and remain within the loading parameters for road haulage. So we’re talking two trucks (one for the carriage, one for the bogies) and two cranes at either end of the journey. But, as you can see, Clarabelle can fit onto a truck with her bogies on and remain within road haulage loading limits, so it’s one truck and no cranes ... and just a little bit more than a little elbow grease! It does require a specially adapted truck and we used the ever-helpful Mario from Australian Train Movers.

Clarabelle sitting in Mario's Yard in Western Sydney

Mario backs up his specially designed low-loader

The whole trailer tilts up and the tailgate folds out to form a gentle ramp

... and Clarabelle is simply winched on board

Crossing the Blue Mountains, coming down Victoria Pass

Nearly there!

Mario backs up the truck and lines up the trailer with
the 16 meters of track that my dad and I laid previously ...

... and with a little help from a local tractor ...

... and some of my muscle and bulk!

There she is, safe in her new home.

New Rub Rails

On the original, just below the windows on the inside, there was a piece of varnished timber at about elbow height. These are rub rails, designed to take a bit more punishment from the travelling public than the rest of the lining.

Some of the new rub rails in the main bedroom

All the remaining ones I have are silky oak and they range in condition from reasonable through to unusable. Many were missing when we got Clarabelle so, for continuity, I stripped the remaining few out of the main bedroom and made new ones from some timbers my dad had laying around under his house. This last trip to the carriage at the end of December I managed to fit them.

Most are white cedar (I think) but one is red cedar and two are maple. I've actually cut them deeper than the originals and spent quite a bit of time at home sanding and varnishing them to a high finish. I think they look pretty good now!

A close up, the red cedar in the middle, white cedar either side

Finding the right screws to attach them with was a minor adventure in itself. Hardware stores don't stock slot-head brass screws anymore but a hunt around on the internet and I came up with Bronze and Brass Fasteners who provided beautiful 2 1/2 inch brass slot-heads at a reasonable price and an excellent postal service.

I now have some silky oak left over from making the table which I'll save for some rub rails further along the carriage. And I should give a big thanks to my mate Andrew who carefully shaped the blanks into the finished shapes for me. Thanks mate!

The new rub rails on the other side of the carriage

The Wrong Colour!

A couple of blogs ago I commented on having found good colour matches for the original colours 1072 was painted in. This trip I finally got around to using some of those paints for the first time and, as these pictures will demonstrate, I goofed on one of them!

On the interior, I’m happy. The “King’s Gold” from the British Paints range and the “Deep Indian Red” from the Colourbond range are just about perfect matches, as you can see elsewhere in the blog. But I said that for the main colour for the exterior, originally a Tuscan Red, the best match was a colour called “Headlands” from the Colourbond range. Well, as you can see here, “Headlands” leaves the carriage a bit in the pink!

The three panels on the left are painted in the wrong colour, except for the droplights picked out in Deep Indian Red. Compared to the Heritage Red that I had previously used on the right, you can see that the new colour is just not right!

I’ve actually got a long history of trying to track down the exterior colours for 1072 which was complicated by my original lack of appreciation that the main red being different from the red on the droplights. The latter red is Deep Indian Red as used on the internal trim. This tale of two reds became apparent when I visited the Ipswich Carriage Works Museum in 2009 where 1074 is preserved in original condition and livery.

So anyway, after a period of painting a largish area of the carriage in ‘Headlands”, I was able to confirm that this is indeed the wrong colour. I picked this colour based on those little sample cards you can get in the paint shops. I pressed on for a while, painting away in what felt like the wrong colour just to confirm that opinion. As you can see, it took me a fair bit of painting before I was convinced that I was wrong!

But all was not lost! Previously in my search for the perfect red, I had purchased a litre of Colourbond “Bright Red” base, which was obviously a mistake! The toplights I painted with this looked like they belonged on a fire engine. But seeing that Headlands was not red enough and I had some bright red to play with, I combined the two and voila! Still not perfect but close enough to use as an undercoat to the eventual correct topcoat, when I figure out what that is.

The new hybrid red, a bit more like it! I've only used it around the windows here but you can see that it is see it is a better match to the Heritage Red and more like the original Tuscan Red.

So I’ve used this better hybrid colour to cover details in my latest fix-ups; in this case the last 3 drop lights to be attached to the carriage. It’s all one step back but two steps forward!

A new table

Just spent the last week of 2010 working on the carriage and have lots to show you over the next few blogs. And, to whet your appetite, here is a shot of the dining area with the new table installed.

I built the table at home based on a single slab of Silky Oak that a friend gave to me. I had it remilled and thinned to 35mm then spent quite a bit of time routing channels lengthwise on the underside and then back filling them with Maranti as well as routing channels across the grain into which strengthening battens were screwed. All that in an effort to prevent the slab curling, warping and splitting. I've edged the whole thing with Maranti and added a shim of Jarrah between the edging and the main table piece just to give a small highlight. I added another shim of Jarrah on the underside of the edging with a rounded strip of Tassie Oak fixed below to take the angle off the edge where legs and knees are most likely to come into contact with the table. All joints were made good with biscuits where possible.

The table is attached to the wall via two very heavy duty angle brackets that I recovered from under the seats that were originally in the carriage. A third bracket attached to the floor supports a central leg on the aisle end of the table.

Internal rearrangements

Back to the carriage itself. This time I thought I’d review what I’ve been up to on the inside.

I took the above pic on the very first day that I saw 1072 and, as you can see, the original layout of these carriages was nine compartments separated by full width bench seats and the whole length of the carriage was open above the seats. There was a door on either side of each compartment and you can see that two of the doors on the right hand side were not attached when I got her but luckily they were inside lying on the floor. You can also see that the toplights had been panelled over by QR so a big part of the restoration so far has been making the frames and glazing them (all 46 of them!) to bring her back to something like her original condition.

I didn’t need 18 working doors and so 14 have been screwed shut. This in itself has been a problem in that all the doors have drooped a little over time. For the now-permanently shut doors, this was simply a matter of jacking the door back up until square and screwing into position. But the working doors took a little more attention. A mate of mine who’s handy with a welder took some T-section steel and formed up braces like this one. The doors were then jacked up into square and the braces attached using some hefty screws. They’ve been in for over 2 years now and look to be holding well. These will all be covered over with interior lining, hidden away but keeping the doors square and true.

The T-section steel came from the backs of the seats. I didn’t need 18 seats and I certainly didn’t need them going the full width of the carriage so most of them were removed completely. I have retained one at each end and two have been shortened to form a dining area with an aisle down one side.

Which brings us to the last pic in this post. Taken earlier this year looking in the opposite direction to the first pic on this blog, you can see a lot has happened! Most of the seats have gone, walls going in for the bathroom and main bedroom, walls being lined ready for the kitchen and, most impressively, the original floor professionally sanded and polished. That floor has come up beautifully – 80-year-old Hoop Pine with a deep honey colour and a frame of some reddish hardwood that I can’t identify. You can also see the new toplights as well as most of the drop-lights that have been reinstated. When we go her, around half of the windows had been smashed so they have all had to be reglazed – mostly with thick glass recycled from a skip at Macquarie University!

Some QRR crockery

Leaping ahead in the renovation process to the day when we eventually move in and use 1072 as a home away from home. As part of that long-dreamed-of day it is my intention to deck out the carriage with as many period QR bits and pieces as possible and collecting to that end has begun in earnest. That includes crockery, silverware and just about anything else that I can get my hands on.

I picked up these three items as a job lot on Ebay for the astonishing price of $20. In fact the two plates were on offer with the cup thrown in for free because it was stained. A quick wipe with a plastic pot scourer and it came up good as new!

“QRR” stands for “Queensland Refreshment Rooms”. There were a number of these dotted throughout the network in the days of steam at major stops and junctions along the line. The idea was that, as the loco was being refreshed, recoaled and watered, the passengers could do the same with a readily available food and drink service. While there are many fond memories of these rooms there are several contemporary reports complaining that they were expensive and offered poor-quality food in a monopoly situation.

These particular items were made for QR by the famous pottery firm of John Maddock and Sons of Burslem in England. While they are more famous for producing highly decorated fine china, they also had a division specialising in hotel ware. Among their more famous clients was the White Star Line, making all the crockery for the Titanic.

The 1896-1906 mark

One of these marks indicates that the two plates were made between 1896 and 1906 while the mark on the cup has proved to be harder to date and is probably much younger. A list of potters marks as used by John Maddock and Sons can be found here. The plates are 8.5 inches and 8.9 inches in diameter and all have the QRR Crest and a margin of double chequered pattern.

I don't know when this mark refers to

That’s as much as I know about these items and, if you can add more details, please let me know. I’m also after more plates, cups and other QRR crockery so if you have some knocking around that you don’t need, please get in contact with me!

A look inside

Here's a recent photo looking at the inside of 1072. Specifically this will be the dining area made from two of the original seats. These used to run the full width of the carriage but I shortened them so as to create an aisle down one side of the carriage.

The varnished wall is the bulkhead that will separate the dining area from the bathroom. It's constructed of panels of solid recycled maple given to me by one of my wife's mate Bob set in a frame constructed out of maranti from the local Bunnings. The empty rectangle in the middle of the wall accommodates an original NSWGR pair of photographs of Jenolan Caves; not QR I know but I remember these carriage pics from the trains I caught home from school and, having a geological background, how could I resist this little masterpiece! There's even a good chance that the photographs were originally taken by Frank Hurley.

The side wall shows the toplights that I've had to remake but, unlike the originals, the toplights in the main cabin area have clear glass instead of green or red coloured glass (although we have gone for this touch at either end where the bedrooms will be).

The internal colour scheme is based on colour matches to the original paintwork and inspection of 1074 which has been restored for display at the Ipswich Carriage Works. The best match for the interior yellow is a colour called King's Gold from the British Paints range while the red trim is Deep Indian Red from the Solargard range by Dulux. I didn't appreciate that this is a different colour to the Tuscan Red of the exterior, the closest match I've found being Headlands also from the Solargard range.

It wasn't until after I'd repainted a sizable area inside the carriage with the King's Gold and Deep Indian Red that I realised this was the original state colours for Queensland and the master bedroom was looking like the locker room for the Brisbane Broncos! But once I'd got over this minor shock the effect inside the carriage looks just right. I've also gone for a gloss finish on all interior paints as well as being exterior quality paint.

I'm currently working on a table cut from a single slab of silky oak. More on that in a later post. You can also make out a little bit of the original floor which I had professionally sanded and coated earlier this year.