Parliamentary Class coach

In yesterday's comments Harry mentioned this:

As it was sitting on the bench in front of me it was the work of seconds to dump it on Dury's Gap and take a snap. You can read about it in a post from 2011 here. Built in a shed in Seaton a stone's throw away from the original Peco shop, it was a flight of fancy simply because I liked the Paul Towers drawing. It's been sitting in an ice cream tub in the cupboard since then and is starting to delaminate around the roof.

The government enforced 'Parliamentary Class' threw up some short-lived, but interesting vehicles. The problem for the modeller is that they are so far removed from modern vehicles that its hard to persuade modern eyes to accept that they are looking at a coach.  I have had dreams of producing a full-blown 1850s layout, but while these and the wagons are not too much of a stretch, the locomotives are much harder and you are quickly into outside frames and some quite convoluted valve gear. Young Mr. Barnabe turned out a very atmospheric layout with this vibe a couple of years back, but the fact that they are so few and far between tends to reinforce my reasoning. It would be a fantastic space-saver with a train of say six similar to this and a small locomotive: somewhere in the 15-18" length range. The research would be fun and you are totally on your own save (as here) a few buffers and wheels. It's possible that it could even fit on a 'one-board-wonder' type baseboard similar to the Dury's Gap 45 x 12" footprint. But here I am now, gently talking myself into doing it.