Having a layout involving sharp curves (140mm radius), bogie coaching stock looks a bit silly (with three mark 1s covering approximately 180 degrees of curvature), so I have decided to go down the route of 4-wheel coaching stock. A quick look on eBay was horrifying and caused the student loan alarms to start wailing - they generally go for about £25-30 a pop! Then I remembered having seen the Tomix Thomas the Tank Engine range in N scale. Fantastic - one set of Annie and Clarabel available for £20 from the shop I'm buying my track from, so no increase in postage. Plus, being made by Tomix, they'd go around my ludicrously sharp Tomix curves, right?

Well, the parcel arrived today. I say "arrived" - it got to the perfectly fine by the Japanese post office, at which point it was handed over to Parcel Farce. Long story short, they didn't even bother to put a "You were out" (I wasn't) card through my door, just threw it on the floor inside the main door for the building. One 'phone call to the nearest post office confirmed that the parcel was there, and so I went to collect it.

The track was just as I expected, and the points are beautiful - very small, but you can still unclip a small piece of plastic underneath and slot in the standard Tomix point motor in about 15 seconds.

Next out were the coaches. These actually look really nice, with a decent representation of the panelling on the coaches in the TV series. I don't know if there's any specific prototype these are meant to represent, but they make nice generic panelled stock:

However, on playing with them on the track I had to hand, I came up against a problem; the coaches struggled with simple curves, tipping over when going from straight to curved track due to buffer lock. This photo (with the Rapidos removed) gives an idea of the angle the coaches are at to one another on curved track:

Trying the on a reverse curve, however, pointed out a different problem with the long rigid chassis-mounted couplings; they wouldn't stand half a chance of staying coupled, even if the couplings could be extended to prevent buffer lock:

Between the coaches, this could possibly be remedied by having a rigid bar coupling free to pivot at each end, but how to (removably) couple to a loco? I was thinking of fiddling around with bits of bent wire at this point, until I placed a Peco van on the track too. This led to another discovery:

These coaches, despite being nominally 1:150, are somewhat larger than Peco rolling stock at nominal 1:148. So the question is posed: Do I cut my losses and sell them on whence they came on eBay, or do I persevere and attack them with a saw and file and try to make something presentable out of them? I'm loath to damage the finish on them, especially having paid just over £20. If all else fails, I may have to try to make something out of a Peco chassis and some plasticard, unless anyone else has any suggestions for how I can obtain four-wheeled coaching stock at a price suitable for a student budget? Also, does anyone fancy a Tomix Annie and Clarabel?

Answers on a 4" by 6" piece of pulped dead plant or recycled electrons, please.