No.116 The Mainline Restaurant Buffet – Part One, Flush Glazing

My first Mainline Restaurant Buffet came from the Cheltenham Model Centre in 1986 for the princely sum of £5.50. For the time it was a well detailed model and far superior to previous Mainline Mk1s which had holes in the sides to aid assembly.
Original Mainline Restaurant Buffet – with re-painted roof

I parted with my first Mainline RB in 2008 and upgraded to a Bachmann Restaurant Unclassified with metal wheels, wire handrails and close couplers. However there was a slight problem. The Bachmann maroon RUs only come with E or W prefixes. If you want an M prefix on a ready to run restaurant car with kitchen facilities it seems to me that it has to be the old Dapol / Hornby twelve wheeler.

Fast forward to 2015 and there has been some correspondence on RMweb about the old Mainline / Replica Railways Restaurant Buffet Cars and in particular what to do about the recessed glazing and the raised window surrounds. I would take a second look at a Mainline 37-114.
Mainline 37-114 – Disassembled

Unlike the Bachmann and Hornby Mk1s with their separate sides, roof and under frame, the coach body on the Mainline/Replica Mk1 RB is a one piece moulding which clips onto a black under frame. To my mind this must have made production very complex with three different paint colours all to be applied to the same moulding prior to adding transfers. No wonder that my models were not painted as well as the latest Bachmann products.

I would comment that with age something seems to have happened to the roof ventilators. It seems to me hat the glue has not been stable. The ventilators on my most recent model were covered with a sticky deposit and could easily be pushed out of the roof. The ‘stickiness’ was removed with white spirit and the ventilators were given a coat of Matt Cote before being glued back in position with Butanone.
New wire handrails and buffer heads filed down

A quick comparison with the Bachmann RU (E) 39-101 was quite encouraging and prompted me to replace the moulded handrails on the coach ends in wire. I would also use a file on the Mainline rounded buffer heads and thin them down to a produce a flatter profile similar to the heads on the Bachmann coach.
The first side Flush Glazed – note the strips of double sided tape ready for the second side

The glazing on my Mainline RB was already loose so it was a relatively easy decision to go ahead and add some Finecast Flush Glazing. I last used Finecast glazing on some Lima Mk1s. I had been quite pleased with the overall result but had been slightly disappointed with the appearance of the tiny top windows. I did not use any glue. Instead the Finecast glazing was held in place by the existing Lima combined roof/window glazing. For the Mainline RB I would use a similar approach and hold the Finecast glazing in place with the original Mainline clear window plastic. The Mainline plastic is quite rigid and in order to provide an even pressure to all the Finecast glazing I made some ‘sticky fixes’ out of 6mm strips of thin clear plastic sheet covered on both sides with double sided tape. These were positioned in the same places as the glue used originally by Mainline. This way the Mainline clear plastic could be firmly attached to the coach sides without any flexing between fixing points.
Both sides fixed

I was pleased. I would say it is all about angles and viewing distances!
Back together

What about those window surrounds? For interest I have included a view of a prototype RB as running recently on the Severn Valley Railway. This is just one a number of images of Mk1 catering vehicles courtesy of HughLlewelyn[ whose Flickr stream has over 9000 images of current and extant BR
Cropped from Hugh Llewelyn's Flickr Stream

For comparison another view of the Mainline model – this time running with a Bachmann Mk1.
Bachmann Mk1 (left) – Mainline RB (right)

Just a thought –IF Bachmann were to produce a new RB would the window surrounds turn out like the ones on their Derby Lightweights?
Another approach – raised window surrounds on Bachmann Derby Lightweight

So far so good – Part Two will detail the addition of Bachmann Close couplers.
I think the old Mainline RB looks good from this angle and at this viewing distance!

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