Varnishing Railway Carraiges

Hi all,

I am looking at convincing some of the people I work for into varnishing a railway carraige. It is NSW design circa 1920's.

Clad in WRC, T&G all the bells and whistles.

My only limitations are that there can be no spraying, and as safe as possible.

My resident woodworking expert at TAFE suggested marine varnish by International.

If anyone has done something similar, (there is around 100m2 on this job) using International varnish or another product, I would like to know about any pitfalls or pointers about doing a job this big.

I rung a large un-named supplier in order to visit my work site to have a look and give some advice, only to be told that that is not what their customer representatives are there for, so if any reps are here, and are willing to visit me in S/W Sydney to convince me to buy your product, please feel free to email me, I will supply more details there.

I am trying to get WRC to match Australian Cedar (as used for panelling of coaching stock in that era) as much as possible. I have done a lot of research into this, but I cant find any examples of rollingstock from that era that has been varnished in NSW that is around today. I found some information regarding varnishing teak panneled carriages, which was widely used in the UK in that era, but not much else. Photos are pretty scarce as well of varnished rollingstock, I'm not sure if it is a semi or high gloss. (looks very shiny)

I apologise if you have come across this problem before, I did a search using "railway" to see if there was anything similar answered before. I only come across this site for the first time. I wished I had found it before.

Thanks in advance,

Daniel

Have you tried the Dorrigo Steam Museum site they have some 1920's passenger carraiges they are restoring.

Here is their website http://www.dsrm.org.au/