Sorted, at least in principle, the trailer bogies. At the last Epsom show I bought a pair of Replica B4 bogies (assembled, with wheels) and a pair of B5 kits (no wheels). Actually, I thought I'd bought more than that, but for the moment those two pairs were all that came to hand.

Looking at Replica's website the other day, only kits (without wheels) are available. So, for this first stab at getting it to run well (the DTC furthest from the MBSO) I've used a B4 at the cab end and a B5, with Bachmann wheels the other end (fit the wheels before superglueing the second side). Of course, these don't just push in to replace the Hornby bogies. I've used a razor saw to remove the spigot, opened the central hole in the bogie for an M3 bolt, fitted an M3 washer in the bottom of the bogie (unfortunately, that doesn't show in the pic) and araldited an M3 nut to what I think is an M5 washer (glue it to the stamped side) because the M3 nut doesn't give much surface to fit to the chassis (it doesn't fall into the existing hole, but not much of it will overlap).

After all the angst that the bogies were pointing the wrong way, the Replica B4/B5 have the same problem. Fortunately, the tension lock needs to be removed, and I've filed the bogie ends to try to provide some clearance to the couplings.

After this had set, I tried it with some bluetack to hold it (I had to razor saw away the ends of the underframe to leave room for the M5 washer) and was sufficiently encouraged to glue it.

Today, it runs well - even by only changing two bogies, the whole unit now runs much better. In the early testing last night I noticed that both the MBSO and the TSO are very easy to mis-rail, and quite hard to get correctly railed, so I'm intending to do the other DTC and then the TSO once I've found, or bought, more Replica B5s / wheels.

For the MBSO I'm increasingly tempted to try removing the motor and fit two black beetles, but reusing the Hornby bogie sideframes. Suspect it might need more weight, and is maybe not worth the candle. For the moment, I've got enough aggravations on getting this to look and run acceptably without doing this - particularly since it now does run a lot better.

From this pic you can probably see that the detail on the Replica bogies isn't as good, so some work to do there as well as adding a current collector (apparently they *aren't* shoebeams on the CIGs and VEPs) - for the moment I've only got a stock of MJT shoebeams, I've already superglued the Hornby current collectors to their bogies because they kept coming off, so not yet quite sure where I'm going on that front.

I've re-added the 'bodging' subtitle because this blog will be all about bodging (VEP, hopefully a CIG, ...) and in this case the word is doubly accurate. The inner nut isn't flat on its washer, which means the pivot bolt slopes out slightly. That doesn't really matter, the bolt is at 90 degrees to each side and the body isn't visibly troubled by this (although making sure the nut *was* in that position took some doing ;-) The other bodge is a bit worse - when I fixed the washers with bluetack for the first trial, I noticed that the ride height, at least at the inner end, was a little too high. Thought it was the thickness of the bluetack, but today it was still too high. What I've done is to file off a little of the face of each nut, and to file a little more from the top of the bogie around the pivot. Still not perfect, but the difference in the heights of the gangways is less than a millimetre.

Not yet sure what I'll do for future pivots - to me, M3 seems a good size to use (although it's a lot bigger than what Bachmann use), and I've got nylon M3 bolts to minimise loosening (will probably use thread lock on brass bolts eventually, but before that I need to shorten the bolts and, worst case, fit pickups for the lighting (as I said in the Hornby board VEP forum, the couplings on my DTCs no longer make electrical contact). Perhaps I can manage to get half-height M3 nuts (I believe they are usually packaged with hens' teeth), or maybe I'll open out the pivot hole until the nut fits inside, now that I'm confident of the general approach, and use M3 washers as necessary for the spacing. The required amount of spacing will always be a matter of trial and error, but at least on the DTCs (with end couplings, and their fixing bolt, removed) there is no need to relieve the top of the bogie to clear the coupling bolt. If that turns out to be necessary for the TSO, it won't be a bag of laughs.

Test running: I don't have any points I can use to test how this tracks (nor the space, at the moment), just an oval with 18" radius ends and short straights on its sides. On this, I've run this unit in both orientations (i.e. left to inside, and right to inside), each in both directions (motor pushing two and a half coaches / motor pushing one coach). The unmodified trailer bogies have previously been oiled, although it didn't improve things very much. So, I'm convinced this is worth doing for me, but as always YMMV.