7mm Building JLTRT carriages - a gangway question

[Dog Star]

In another topic I posed a question about fixing rubber bellows to brass etchings... parts which I robbed from a yet-to-be-started JLTRT kit for a GWR Toplight. A discussion with Steph Dale about an appropriate superglue included an interesting snippet which has caused me to think about the age old concern of corridor connections between adjacent carriages (the gap or closeness between adjacent buffing plates). Here is Steph's comment:-

... I just wasn't sure how soft that rubber bellows was going to be...

As yet I do not have two completed carriages with corridor connections so I am not in a position to answer these questions...

* for carriages which are fitted with JLTRT gangways, what is the distance between buffer beams when the gangway rubbing plates are just touching?

* for the same carriages, can the bellows be compressed sufficiently that the buffer heads touch?

Ideally, the carriages ought to be either GWR stock or BR Mk.1s (with buffers extended).

thank you, Graham

 

[Heather Kay]

I can answer the second part: the material is not really soft enough to compress nicely.

The concertina version on the GWR gangways might just be squishy enough, but the Mk1 type isn't.

 

[Steph Dale]

Heather,
That's a really good follow up. My concern was associated with the use of BS gangways with Pullman types; we're aiming to use the two types together, a Southern speciality.
Steph