Kevin Aris

October 20

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October 19

good evening

my av still continues, had anticipated putting this away again and doing something else by now, but enjoying it that much i will complete it now, but possibly without sails

the main mast was made up and placed into position

bowsprit netting went in

foremast shrouds went in as the standing rigging commenced

pin rails scratched from the kit 8 holes to 19

fore backstays and main stays in

along with the derrick rigging

October 15

im still going to say Swan class

On 11/10/2021 at 18:47, Paul Bradley said:

September 27

good morning everyone

well the bowsprit rigging is completed, and it was actually more to it than i thought,

all the ends are trimmed and im 75% happy with it, still dont look how i envisaged it

safety nets next

September 23

good evening everyone

i continue to work on this beast, often going backwards, but getting there

all blocks that attach to pintles or none rope tend to have round collets, i have tried to replicate this using and alternative evergreen tube

at this stage she was put away for a month or so whilst i did another project which has since gone on hols again in an attempt to complete the running rigging by Christmas this year

main mast

after 13 years the Amerigo has some mast rigging,

August 2

good evening everyone

quite a bit done to the chassis today, although you wont believe it

the brass round will eventually be bent and attached to the handbrake lever, however the way the kit wants me to join them to the raft made me look at alternatives, but there would need to be more room required to achieve it so i came up with my own idea, which is tidier and looks better

the lever moves this raft which in turn creates friction on the wheels to slow them down

these bits of brass sandwich the raft which is tidier then a 1mm hole to attach

carriage suspension

each corner has a vertical metal bandings and has taken some time to get right

two metal strips are turned at one end, and fixed to the frame the other, a folded bands secures them, and a rod stops them from collapsing

still very much work in progress

August 2

could room temperature affect the tyres sizes,

August 2

i sent of for this, no idea what its going to be like, will let you know, if nothing else it will give me a rough idea of size

Shop Horse Bus Plan 1/20th Scale | Hobby.uk.com Hobbys

sent of for a few of their plans and handbooks as well

August 2

1 hour ago, perdu said:

Glad you like it, you have just ordered JT's plans I will be following yours too.

The whole public transport 'thing' does it for me, expect I'll scratch a horse tram next.

where do you get your JT plans from

August 2

im finding my long term builds, just are that, long term, but the more i try something else, the more i enjoy them and worry i wont go back

August 2

some stunning work here, i have just ordered a set of 1/20 plans for an omnibus, that i want to take to 1/10, i may just steal your running gear LOL

August 2

wow thats nice, love the wire wheels

August 2

good morning everyone

never got quite as much done yesterday, as the wife walked out on me

when i say the wife walked out on me that not quite what happed, for a start she got in a car, not walked, and it was our car, and i was driving, and i knew where she was going, oh and she comes back Tuesday

the horse is still being worked on, but already i am changing things

the instructions call out for a simple 3 sided brace but looking through other logs i am going with a full brace

August 2

welcome aboard

July 31

good afternoon everyone

day 2 of my latest build,

wheels are first, But having done them last on the hearse build i am going to wait a while, however i did the hubs as i am using a different sort of acrylic paint, they are taking some work to make them presentable

starting the chassis

the kit provides 5mm x 5mm walnut for the longitudinals and have a cleft put along the full length, i did this by hand, it looked a utter mess, so i used some 6x6 and used the table saw, 3 clefts are on either sided of the chassis front and rear

mainly only the laser side is painted, most of this has now had at least 3 coats, with no primer

at present i am now doing the hounds

July 30

rated as one being better detailed than the 1/12 Model Trailways Concorde Stagecoach i fancied this after the discovery of my Tudor mansion, built and forgotten about, and it quickly follows my completion of the hearse build

what i have found to be a pain, no instruction handbook, just a CD, or you can download from different places

priced at about £130 im sure it will keep me out of trouble for the next few weeks

July 30

Good evening everyone

with my summer break i am starting another wagon,

Taken from Wikki

Stagecoaches were familiar vehicles along the main roads of the East and the South before the coming of railroads in the 1830s and 1840s. Even as the nation's network of iron and steel rails grew larger and more comprehensive, stagecoach connections to small and isolated communities continued to supplement passenger trains well into the second decade of the twentieth century. However, stagecoach travel was most difficult and dangerous across the vast expanse of the American West, where it attracted the most attention. In large measure that was because of the inordinately great distances involved and the Herculean effort required to maintain regular service across the region's dry and sparsely populated landscape.

Stagecoach lines in the East tended to connect preexisting centers of population, and passengers took regular meals at the established inns and taverns along the way. Nothing of the kind existed in the West in 1858, when John Butterfield undertook an overland stage line connecting St. Louis and San Francisco by way of El Paso, Texas. The route also ran through Tucson and Los Angeles, but neither was more than a village of a few hundred residents at that time. A federal contract paid the stage company $600,000 a year to carry U.S. mail across the continent, and that money helped subsidize way stations at regular intervals, where, in the absence of existing settlements along most of the proposed route, the coaches could change draft animals and the passengers could find food. The Butterfield organization spent nearly a year getting everything into place to support semiweekly stagecoach service.

When Butterfield's Overland Mail Line opened for business on 16 September 1858, the 2,795-mile journey between San Francisco and St. Louis required approximately three weeks of hard traveling, and that was during the best weather. The coaches kept moving all through the day and night except for brief intervals at way stations. Stagecoach fare did not include the cost of meals, which at an average price of a dollar each three times a day for three weeks might effectively add 50 percent to the cost of a through ticket. Sleep had to be obtained aboard the rocking coach.

Antedating Butterfield's line, a stage line connected San Diego and San Antonio in 1857 with semimonthly coaches. Even earlier, in 1849, a stage line of sorts connected Independence, Missouri, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. But these earlier carriers were not as ambitious as the Butterfield line, nor were they run with the attention to detail that a large support structure demanded.

In the spring of 1861, with the threat of Civil War and Texas's secession from the Union, the transcontinental stage line moved north. Following the central Over-land Trail, it stretched through the future states of Wyoming,

Utah, and Nevada. Again the Overland Stage Line had to spend a small fortune to build the support structure required for regular operations across the sparsely populated corridor. The long transcontinental journey remained as rigorous as before.

The transcontinental stage line attained its greatest geographical reach under the leadership of Ben Holladay. In the mid-1860s, lines of the Holladay Overland Mail and Express Company extended west from the Missouri River steamboat landings in Kansas and Nebraska to a hub in Salt Lake City. From there additional lines served outposts as distant as Butte, Montana, and The Dalles, Oregon, where steamboat connections to Portland were available. Incurring heavy losses in 1864 and 1965 during the Native American unrest that sometimes prevented overland stagecoaches from running, Holladay in November 1866 sold his interests to Wells, Fargo and Company. Wells, Fargo operated stagecoaches along the transcontinental route between Salt Lake City and Sacramento, California, where steamboats connected to San Francisco. Holladay subsequently acquired and built railroad lines in Oregon.

Railroads generated a great deal of excitement all across the West. As the tracks of the first transcontinental railroad extended east from Sacramento and west from Omaha in the late 1860s, stagecoaches served a shrinking gap. That gap closed when railroad officials drove a last spike at Promontory, Utah, in May 1869 and trains linked California with the rest of the United States for the first time. The era of stagecoaches along the central Overland Trail was over, but thereafter various smaller stage lines linked transcontinental trains to distant outposts. Until buses became popular around the time of World War I, many a road-weary stagecoach continued to meet passenger trains and provide transportation to remote villages in the West. The term "stage" was commonly used to describe any coach, wagon, or sleigh used as a public conveyance. In the 1860s, the heyday of stagecoach lines, the Concord coach, handcrafted in Concord, New Hampshire, by Abbot, Downing and Company, became the quintessential icon of transportation across the frontier West. The first Concord in California, transported aboard a clipper ship that sailed from New England around Cape Horn, inaugurated service out of San Francisco on 25 June 1850.

The familiar egg-shaped body of the Concord coach was renowned for its great strength and its ability to keep passengers dry while floating them across flood-swollen streams. Because the inevitable twisting of the coach body on the rough terrain could easily shatter glass windows, it had only adjustable leather curtains to keep out the dust, wind, and rain. The heavy body, often weighing a ton or more, rode on thick, six-or eight-ply leather belts called thoroughbraces to insulate it from the constant pounding of the wheels over makeshift roads. Nevertheless, the swaying made some passengers seasick. Mark Twain aptly characterized the Concord coach as a "cradle on wheels."

Not all stagecoaches were of the familiar type. Vehicles called "celerity" or "mud" wagons were much lighter and cheaper than Concord coaches and, because they had no springs, offered a much rougher ride. They were primarily used on lines where passenger and express traffic was too light to justify the expense of Concord coaches.

A Concord coach could accommodate as many as nine passengers inside and another six or more on the roof, though no one in a crowded coach rode in comfort. In an age renowned for its propriety and formality, perfect strangers, both men and women, might have to interlock knees in the cramped space of the interior or rest a weary head on another's shoulder. Some passengers passed the long hours of an overland journey by drinking themselves into alcoholic stupors, while others organized or participated in impromptu songfests. One common form of entertainment was to shoot at the wild animals, such as antelope and prairie dogs, visible from coach windows. Some passengers probably whiled away the long hours worrying about Indian attacks, even though attacks and stagecoach holdups were both infrequent. The violence associated with stagecoach travel in the West was for the most part an exaggeration fostered by dime novels, Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, and Hollywood westerns.

Each stagecoach passenger was allowed a maximum of twenty-five pounds of baggage, which rode in a large rear pouch called a boot. The U.S. mail typically rode in the front or rear boot, although, as Mark Twin recalled from personal experience in Roughing It (1872), a large load of mail might be shoved among the feet of passengers. Any express shipments, often gold and silver, rode close to the feet of the driver, a skilled horseman who handled the team of four or six draft animals from a seat atop the coach. Sometimes a special messenger accompanied express shipments to guard them from bandits. On occasion a stagecoach might carry a shipment of produce, such as fresh apples from the orchards of Utah to remote towns in Idaho and Montana.

Twain's personal account of overland stage travel in the early 1860s is evocative and true to fact. However, the 1939 Hollywood epic Stagecoach, directed by John Ford and featuring a young John Wayne, probably did more than anything else to foster modern perceptions of stagecoach travel as both romantic and dangerous. Louis McLane, onetime head of Wells, Fargo and Company, the most famous name in overland stagecoach travel, wrote to his wife in 1865 about artistic depictions of travel by coach, "I thought staging looked very well to the lithographer, but was the devil in reality." Many hearty travellers who crossed the West by stagecoach in the late 1850s and the 1860s surely would have agreed.

July 29

1 hour ago, dnl42 said:

Very nicely done!

It looks like it was a fun build. It's certainly different!

To be sure, your result is far far better your assessment.

26 minutes ago, perdu said:

Very nicely done Kevin, almost an understatement.

Top job and I love it, great soft furnishings too

Thank you

July 29

well i finished it

an enjoyable build

kit quality 10/10

my effort 3/10

paints rattle can

glue was pva and medium C/A

sort furnishings by the wife, thank you

thank you for following, i have another ready to go on the build table

July 29

Good afternoon everyone

a final few pictures before the reveal

July 28

Good morning everyone

this little project is quickly coming to an end

the front suspension was made up along with the 5th wheel (steering head), primed and gloss black top coat

everything apart from the wheels is now finished and ready to be attached

my next post will be possibly tomorrow with a final reveal

July 24

good evening everyone

doors

there was one one hinge supplied instead of 4, replacements come from the states, so i raided the wife dolls house spare parts found 4 and fitted, both doors open

just handle to fit

glazing

a simple job, but rather than paint the glazing strips black i did them antique gold, it looks ok

the very thin plastic film was protected in a p[plastic envelope, but for some reason it is marked by the outline of the photo etch decoration which was also in a plastic envelope - spooky, i did to clean it off somehow

seat

wasnt happy about just painting it brown, so i covered it in leatherette, then put a piping around it to hide the white edges, this them made it to wide for the kit supplied back rest so made one out of brass

front suspension ongoing

decoration is now on, just needs tidying up

July 22

good evening everyone

build continues

interior

the rollers are 19mm long and wooden dowel is provided for that purpose, but i had some right dia plastic tubing, easier to cut, primed and sprayed with Ford antique gold rattle can paint