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Modifying old 1980's Hornby coaches


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A friend of mine is giving me some of the old 1980's Hornby Southern Railway coaches and I'm wondering if they can be modified into more reasonable versions of Maunsell coaches.

 

I know these were a generic mould with Hornby's Great Western coaches and I have seen an article converting them into better examples of GWR coaches. Has anyone done the same but as Southern Railway examples?

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A friend of mine is giving me some of the old 1980's Hornby Southern Railway coaches and I'm wondering if they can be modified into more reasonable versions of Maunsell coaches.

 

I know these were a generic mould with Hornby's Great Western coaches and I have seen an article converting them into better examples of GWR coaches. Has anyone done the same but as Southern Railway examples?

Could you advise the source of the article about converting them to better GWR coaches please?

 

Khris

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A friend of mine is giving me some of the old 1980's Hornby Southern Railway coaches and I'm wondering if they can be modified into more reasonable versions of Maunsell coaches.

As you say, the moulding was shared (roof excepted) with the GWR stock. The nearest Southern stock would be the early 'Thanet' coaches of 1924. These were 57 ft long (so the right length) but had flat ends and narrow corridor connections. Since the ends on these coaches slide out, you might be able to replace them with the flat ends used on their contemporary LMS coaches, with suitable trimming of the curved roof end. A spares stockist like East Kent Models might have them. They still won't be exactly correct (the Brake Third only had one pair of double doors) but they would be a 'fair' approximation. Adding vents over the doors would help (rectangles of 10 thou with the top corners rounded would do) but would require a repaint. Taking off the two separate battery boxes and replacing them with a larger one between the centre trussing would help too. Much beyond that and you may as well get 'proper' Maunsells!

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As you say, the moulding was shared (roof excepted) with the GWR stock. The nearest Southern stock would be the early 'Thanet' coaches of 1924. These were 57 ft long (so the right length) but had flat ends and narrow corridor connections. Since the ends on these coaches slide out, you might be able to replace them with the flat ends used on their contemporary LMS coaches, with suitable trimming of the curved roof end. A spares stockist like East Kent Models might have them. They still won't be exactly correct (the Brake Third only had one pair of double doors) but they would be a 'fair' approximation. Adding vents over the doors would help (rectangles of 10 thou with the top corners rounded would do) but would require a repaint. Taking off the two separate battery boxes and replacing them with a larger one between the centre trussing would help too. Much beyond that and you may as well get 'proper' Maunsells

 

Many thanks for the information Bernard, I was think last night it might be a better idea to turn into better representations of GWR coaches as I had seen an article in either Railway Modeller or Model Rail using the GWR version of the models. I'll have to find some back issues of the past 6 months and see if I can find it.

 

I've also found an article on a finescale modellers forum doing the same http://scalerail.phpbbhosts.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=496

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With the old wood and canvas roof they look quite like late Toplight coaches. Some of these had the toplights themselves plated over in later years and there were some Toplights that didn't actually have toplights! You'd need to alter the ends still, of course.

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