North London Railway 4 comp first (OG05)

This Coachbuilder pack contains a set of parts to aid the construction of a North London Railway 4-wheel, 4 comp. 1st coach in O gauge / 7mm scale standard gauge.

My Coachbuilder packs offer something partway between scratch building and kit building, a basic kit of parts aimed at giving the builder a good head start. If you enjoy building your own rolling stock, don’t mind a bit of work and maybe have a good spares box, a Coachbuilder pack should be quicker than scratch building and an economical alternative to the conventional complete kits. The detailed cast resin parts assemble easily with superglue or general-purpose adhesive. The basic model can then be detailed by the builder according to their preferences.

The North London Railway (NLR) may at first seem like a very niche area for modelling. Indeed, it was comparatively short in terms of route miles and the majority of its traffic was short haul high frequency commuter services. For these services the NLR was well equipped with a substantial fleet of solidly built 4-wheel coaches. From the perspective of coaching stock design, in frontline NLR service they were arguably basic and unremarkable, However, on withdrawal, they were ideal purchases for the fledgeling light railways of the early 20th century and could eventually be found in many unexpected corners of the country, far away from Bow and the North London suburbs they were originally built to serve. In addition to light railways, many private and industrial railways were also keen to snap up a bargain. As an example of the latter, the display model photographed here illustrates an imagined coal board livery as though bought by a colliery for service in miners trains, surviving though to the formation of the NCB.