Gresley 4 + 8 compartment brake third suburban artic pair.

[Ross Natoin]

Hi everyone,

 

A little back story to kick us off, I was watching videos on YouTube of; Grantham the streamlined years, Little Bytham, Retford, London Road and Peterborough North and I noticed all/most of the suburban trains had at least one set of articulated coaches in them. 
 

I purchased the bundle of four suburban coaches and a peppercorn K1 from Hornby with an additional brake third recently and I looked at the brake third and third coach and my brain began thinking. 
 

So I had a look in a book I have called LNER Carriages by Michael Harris.  It has loads of information on all the types of LNER coaches post 1923 I believe. 
 

In that book I found the topic of articulated coaches. It talked about the Silver Jubilee, Coronation and other artic express stock but also about the suburban stock too. 
 

I got to reading it and discovered that I could use my Hornby Gresley suburban four compartment brake third and an eight compartment third to become a brake third artic pair.

 

So I looked for any specific requirements ie ten foot bogies etc but found the the original eight foot six inch bogie where more commonly used (for suburban stock). Result!! 

 

What happened next was to be expected, I got planning how I was to convert these over to an artic pair.

 

I used a piece of 2MM plastic card with a small 10BA bolt and two nuts, removed the brake pipes, buffers and hooks for the couplings and then drilled two holes in one of the spare bogies for the bolts to sit through. 
 

one of the 10BA nuts secured the bolt through the plastic card and the other helped to raise the coach to the correct height.

 

So with that all said I’ve attached some photos of the completed pair. They run beautifully and look the business. 
 

Next I’ll research some more on the under frames and modify those to suit but for now I’m happy with them.

 

Thank you for reading,

 

Ross

Edited October 24, 2021 by Ross Natoin