Hornby 4-Wheel Coach Pre-Grouping Liveries

[LNWR18901910]

Since 1977, Hornby has been producing their Four Wheel Coach model in many liveries for years. Around the time I was born, they mainly produced them in LMS crimson lake as well as GWR chocolate and cream (and not to mention their (former) Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends range). Years later, when I discovered the Hornby Railways Collector Guide website, I was amazed and astounded to learn that they also produced S&DJR and Caledonian Railway coaches.

 

Sure, the model may seem very toy-like and dated these days in terms of detail and prototypical accuracy, but then again, it still has that quaint charm in it. However, it did get me thinking - what about the other liveries they ought to do but probably never got round to...yet? That's where I came in and afetr doing some research into the coach liveries at the time, I decided to present a showcase of the liveries of some of the coach liveries that would have been.

 

London & North Western Railway - plum and spilt milk with white roofs

South Eastern & Chatham Railway - maroon with white roofs

Furness Railway - white and blue

London & South Western Railway - salmon and brown

North Staffordshire Railway Victoria Brown (originally claret) and white

North Eastern Railway - standard light green (surprisingly for me)

London, Brighton and South Coast Railway - olive green (which is the same livery for the Maunsell coaches), pale and middle green, olive green and white and umber and white (Yes, I know there are a lot of choices but the one I would use would have to be the umber and white aside from the pale and middle green which gives a two-tone effect)

Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway - dark yellow and dark brown (or ochre yellow and burnt umber)

 

The trouble when it comes to liveries is deciding which ones suit you and your lcomotives and rolling stock best. Normally, the purist modeller would be the historically-accurate type (which I can be sometimes) but by the end of the day, it's your hobby, it's your layout and you can run whatever trains you want on it just for the fun of it. Because of the fun I am having with these coaches on my layout which got up and and running recently since the lockdown began, I gave myself the chance to make a Tankenstein and now this.

 

When I get ahold of some spare coaches, I will work on those projects and share them with you all here. So watch this space for more details!

[BernardTPM]

S&DJR was the very first livery they did - blue with gold outlining. Given how long they've made it it's surprising they haven't done more colours than they have. The GWR version keeps coming back, of course.

[LNWR18901910]

14 hours ago, BernardTPM said:

S&DJR was the very first livery they did - blue with gold outlining. Given how long they've made it it's surprising they haven't done more colours than they have. The GWR version keeps coming back, of course.

Yes, it does. The GWR version has been produced since 1978 one year after the S&DJR version was released and that was soon followed in 1984 with the introduction of the LMS version along with the LNER version released in 1987 and 1988 and until Hornby recently re-introduced this coach in said-livery in their Railroad range, it was a rarity itself.

 

And so those were the only two liveries this coach came in until the turn of the millennium in which we received not one but two new liveries - Southern Malachite Green which was in keeping with the late-1940s livery and the Caledonian Railway blue, a livery that was often applied to locomotives at the time which is strange on the coach as it is similar to the S&DJR one. It's more along the lines of something the long-defunct Longmoor Military Railway would have used during the First and Second World Wars and therefore the closest you would get to coaches in the LMR blue. However, in 1980, 1981 and 1982, the coaches appeared in the Caledonian Railway crimson and cream which, in my opinion, is much more accurate to the period. That coach itself was sold between 1999 and 2000 as part of the Caledonian Local train set. However, as recent as 2011, the coach returned in that exact same livery as part of another Hornby train set, the Caledonian Belle. Even though this coach may not be period-accurate, it does complete another locomotive Hornby has long-often produced, the Caledonian Railway 264 Class 0-4-0 saddle-tank commonly known as 'Smokey Joe'. For a shunting locomotive, it does compliment for a branch line setting in the late-1800s.

 

As for the Southern one, seeing this model in said-livery again in Hornby's Railroad would be that of a solar eclipse waiting to happen as would any other Four Wheel Coach in liveries of the Pre-Grouping era, or in some cases, brightly-coloured if not garish liveries normally seen and sold exclusively in starter sets. The SR Malachite coach was only sold between 2000 and 2001, the same year the Maunsell green version was released and would be sold for the next eight years until 2009. However, during this time, another coach in a different livery appeared - MSLR or the Macnhester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway. I didn't know at the time it existed until I found it that it was actually the Great Central Railway all along despite its name change. It was kinda like the South Eastern Railway merging with the London, Chatham and Dover Railway to becoming the South Eastern and Chatham Railway.

 

One thing I should mention is that I still own the original Four Wheel Coach from the battery-operated My First Hornby train set which was introduced as a companion to the My First Scalextric racing sets. That train set peaked my interest in trains much at that age even if it was meant for beginners. What not many know is that the train set (mainly the station) was based on the original Musical Thomas the Tank Engien Train set hence the same mold and speaker where the sounds used to play but this has been removed from it. Nowadays, Hornby produces cheap battery-operated train sets for beginners. For a full in-depth review of both these sets, go and watch Sam's Trains reviews on YouTube.

 

What surprised me even more is that there is also a Track Cleaning Coach that has still been in production since 1982! Back in the Tri-ang Railways and Tri-ang Hornby days, there was a Track Cleaning Car produced from 1961 to 1970 and a Track Cleaning Wagon produced from 1971 to 1976 which is kind of an American or Canadian piece of rolling stock. But here, on the Track Cleaning Coach, it has something that the average, ordinary yet bog-standard run-of-the-mill Four Wheel Coach lacks on closer inspection - a coupling hook. The chassis has been upgraded and making it more detailed despite the huge gap where this cleaning thing is installed inside it. I remember getting this coach years ago and years later, for the sake of accuracy, this was something Jago Hazzard on YouTube attempted - a swap of the chassis. Because of the design, this made it easier on the regular coach model, but on the special coach model, it was tricky and a right pain in the keister to do so. But at last, I finally did it even if it mean acquiring another one of the same model just for the sake of a certain part.

 

It was during the 2000s, I was a teenager at the time getting back into model trains fully. My father and I were getting the old layout up and running again even if it meant taking up the whole dining room of my old house! I had a string of four-wheel coaches mainly from the Hornby Thomas the Tank Engine range even if they were all worn, battered and seen better days. During this point, I finally invested in some old Hornby Four Wheel Coaches in the GWR livery as well as some LMS liveried ones which I still own (kind of). If anyone is collecting Four Wheel Coaches and intend to run them on modern layouts, I would best reccommend swapping the plastic wheels for metal ones as they are much cleaner and don't pick up dirt - or at least, much dirt - on the tracks.

 

Whatever people or modellers like myself say or think, there really is something to be said for Hornby's Four Wheel Coach. Like fine wine, it has never lost its taste nor its charm. Budget Model Railways on YouTube even make their own short wheelbase coaches for people who have their own micro layouts and they tell you to use a Tri-ang wagon chassis on them, but as they are passenger stock, it would make sense to use the Tri-ang 20-ton Brake Van chassis or the Bachmann 20-ton Brake Van chassis. On Shapeways, a member named TangoOscarMike (who I am good friends with) makes freelance style loco bodies reminiscent of the vintage O Gauge toy trains of old for the Hornby 0-4-0 chassis as well as duckets for Hornby's Four Wheel Coach. It's worth checking them out because they are great people who 3D-print their own stuff that people can afford and use on their layouts themselves which is really nice.

[HonestTom]

I think the choice of liveries was mostly dictated by what they needed to match a locomotive. The Caledonian coaches were introduced the same year as the Caley Pug and the Southern coaches came out when they brought out the Terrier in Southern Isle of Wight livery. I recall one photo from an early 80s catalogue that matched the LBSC E2 with GWR liveried 4-wheelers

[LNWR18901910]

10 minutes ago, HonestTom said:

I think the choice of liveries was mostly dictated by what they needed to match a locomotive. The Caledonian coaches were introduced the same year as the Caley Pug and the Southern coaches came out when they brought out the Terrier in Southern Isle of Wight livery. I recall one photo from an early 80s catalogue that matched the LBSC E2 with GWR liveried 4-wheelers

Really? Wow, fancy that. It may not be accurate to the company at the time, but it looks nice. If you have any pictures of it to share, that would be great and helpful for this thread.

 

Also, I have just taken a couple of pictures of the Four Wheel Coaches in Pre-Grouping liveries Hornby never made (not yet).

[LNWR18901910]

So far, these coaches are the two ones I have; two I picked up at Warley 2019 and two I had already for years. Can you guess which livery they were originally?

These coaches were made from the Hornby Four Wheel Coach itself. Two of them were modern Hornby GWR ones repainted into LNWR plum and spilt milk livery which made it easy as that coach livery was almost similar. The other two were Hornby Railways GWR 4-Wheel coaches repainted into SER/SECR maroon. For those two ones, I had to sacrifice the Track Cleaning Coach Hornby still makes because it has an accurate chassis.

 

I will be making more of those using two Annie and Clarabel coaches which I am restoring as well as converting. Can you guess which liveries I am working on next?

[TangoOscarMike]

I've mentioned it in my own thread, but let me give a quick description of my painting technique, for those who wish to reproduce Hornby's GWR style, but with a different livery.

By "Hornby's style", I mean:

• Contrasting colours in the panels.
• The beading picked out in gold.

So this doesn't apply to single-colour or contrasting-colour-from-the-waist-up liveries, like the two pictures above.

 

With the roof/glazing and chassis removed (obviously) I do the following:

• Prime the whole body with a grey spray can.
• Paint the main body colour with many coats of very thin paint.
• Paint the panels with many coats of very thin paint.
• Apply masking tape inside the panels and on the large flat area below the windows.
• Dry-brush the lining (repeatedly) with gold.
• Remove the masking tape and paint over any stray gold paint with (again) a very thin coat of the orignal colour.

I use hobby acrylics, thinning as I go (on a palette) with tap water. I have a little pot of water with a drop of washing-up liquid and an ice cube in it (keeping it cold seems to slow the drying).

 

The point is that my hands aren't steady enough to paint up to the edge of the beading, but if the paint is runny enough then it will flow naturally to where it's wanted. So you don't need much skill for this, just patience!

 

Next time I will try dry-brushing the beading with ochre before the gold, since the gold paint is rather translucent.