teeinox

The screw I used was 2mm. There is slop. You could be right that the hole is about 3mm: it was designed to go over a plastic spigot, not take a screw.

Lovely rake of coaches. Incorrect length or not, HD captured the "essence" of the Mk1 coach. Curiously, though, the exception to that, in my view, is the sleeping car. Unlike the other coaches, it does seem to look "short". I don't know why that is.

Completely agree with this view. The magnetic force in the Elite couplings is considerable such that in practice, coupled together, they form a rigid bar coupling, much like the Hornby/Roco mechanical equivalents do. So, where attaching direct to bogies, I have used this type from the Hunt coupling range; the picture comes from the West Hill Wagon Works web-site. The hole is used to screw the coupling in place on the bogie frame, with a bit of play to allow it to pivot. If it is screwed on the underside of the frame, there may be a bit of droop, but that disappears when the couplings connect. With this arrangement, my 8-coach sets run perfectly, whether hauled or propelled, with no derailments or uncoupling. teeinox

Jouef couplings to fit Mk3 coaches are available on ebay: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/165025312009?hash=item266c466d09:g:-OYAAOSw9U5hHWVd&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAAwOyJuHfn4itcI4NC5ZuG%2BlALVm%2BIBE4HQE3Eh1GRKK07X4eMB5KPZDVqYzCc2hknDga7sdx%2BbVJpR1mDawSKOuZgm52a1yadFqUyI0AMPukoRQxxjNIJ4eqk6OAnL1X%2B5F0jL%2BeENqMsAxuZSi0zQUW8VSDTknaWWDejflzyC2UPh6lVSjDdqVctHaXX5OFTbo%2FsKL5t5xt8mJMitOI3WiRk9FzUz5UnR1OkMrQQFoncUbUHvFD5sqcY5SvUrTI23A%3D%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR8rKnoPHYg As you will see, these have Hornby Dublo coupling hooks on the ends. Cut these off, and cement Hunt magnetic couplings onto the residual spigot to replace them. In the Hunt range, choose the ones which do not have the NEM swallow tail. Think through coach spacing carefully.

Thank you for this extract from the 1964 Victoria Platform and Carriage Working. It raises some interesting questions! First of all, a bit of context. My understanding is that the HA/Class 71 only provided ETH; they did not have steam heating facilities. Of the Southern’s types of electric and diesel motive power, only the three Class 70s had provision for steam heating. In Simon Lilley and John Wenyon’s book “Class 71/74 Locomotives”, they write: “With electrification, the ‘Golden Arrow’ Pullman service would be electrically hauled. Discussions with the Pullman Car Co Ltd as to who would pay for the fitting of the 17 cars used on the service reached agreement when on 24 June (judging by context, 1960) the Southern Region General Manager Mr C.P. Hopkins agreed to recommend to the Southern Area Board that they pay the £24,000 estimated cost of the work.” It is not said what the work was, but there would be no heating if the Pullmans were not converted to ETH, so I assume it included that. Furthermore, what were the 17 vehicles? Yes, there would have been spare Pullmans required, but 17 in total? And if there were Bulleid FKs in the consist outside the summer season, would not they have had to have been converted too, along with through wiring of the PMVs? Any light on that one? The second question has to be, if the FKs only worked on the up train, how did they reach Dover from London?

Lovely photo. The office block to which it was attached was a bit of an architectural period piece, too. As for the locomotive, is that a NBL Class 21, the diesel-electric cousin of the hydraulic Class 22? Am I right, I’m not good at loco spotting?

Yes, I was puzzled as to why the floor pan was so small. It seemed so strange. But in putting the kit back into its box, I discovered why. The floor pan has to fit across the top of the roof, so constraining its length to a bit less than the width of the roof. The packaging of the kit into the box is almost a work of origami!

I was looking for a small diesel maintenance depot which could be used to display some of my collection of (a mere seven) diesel-hydraulic locomotives. A trawl of eBay revealed the Hornby R516 Diesel Maintenance Depot in the “Snap Fit series” as a suitable candidate. A pristine example was on offer for £16 plus postage. Irresistible for the “Snap Fit” feature alone! I don’t know when this model came out, possibly quite a while ago. Apparently, the prototype was Ripple Lane, not a place frequented by diesel-hydraulics, I imagine. However, it is rather bijou, big enough at two tracks, and small enough to sit on a shelf which is what I had in mind. Here is the rather retro box: Contents were all in their original state, and carefully wrapped in yellow tissue paper. They consist of sides and end screens, all with lots of glazing. Plus a solid flat roof with two roof-lights. Finally, there is a floor pan indented for two tracks. Petrol pumps and oil barrels are supplied to add to the atmosphere. The mouldings are beautiful, but you have to stick on your own transfers and do quite a lot of painting to bring out their quality. Fair enough, though there is only one transfer for all the petrol pump meter panels. So the fuel reading in every case is: 11301. Maybe Westerns and Warships all tank exactly the same amount of fuel? This photo of part assembly gives you an idea of the interior detail. Rather fabulous, isn’t it? The glazing is not so fabulous. You have to cut out the panels from transparent sheets; dotted lines guide you. In general, they cut out over-sized and have to be tailored to fit. The end screens were a doddle. That for the side windows needed tedious trimming, and the clip-fit arrangement to hold them was not adequate to keep them in place; they fell out easily. That is why quite a number of these kits on offer second-hand have this glazing missing. I had to cement in plastic keeper strips to ensure the glazing stayed in place. As for the glazing in the roof-lights; it was a total pig. 3/10 for “Snap-Fit” here. Which brings us to assembly. The side walls are supposed to hook into slots in the floor pan. Except they didn’t. As I found out, if you forced them, they broke; luckily reparable with plastic cement. They needed considerable trimming to fit. Even so, they remain “difficult” and fragile. Not a problem if the model is not going to be disassembled, unfortunately my intention. Moreover, some of the petrol pumps and barrels obstruct the fitting process. So they can only be fitted after the side walls are in place. O.K., but Hornby don’t tell you that. Trial and error applies, mainly error. Once the side walls are fitted, the rest goes together easily. The end screens drop into place and are secured by the dummy light fittings. Their design is exquisite. The fixing spigots are not round; they are oblong with chamfered corners to fit into the correspondingly shaped holes. So the light is always exactly aligned. There are drainpipes and ladders, too. The drainpipes even have the fixing clamps moulded, while the ladders are made of metal. Once they are fitted, the flat roof fits over to stabilise the structure, though there is no positive engagement. Similarly with the roof lights: they simply drop into place. Except mine don’t; they are too badly distorted. Looking at other examples on eBay, this seems a common problem. And that is it! 8/10 for the “Snap-Fit” features. It would be higher except for those dodgy clips. Trackwise, it looks like it was designed for Hornby Setrack. I don’t have any, so what it has got is some Tri-ang series 3 track. So, with the track installed and a selection of green diesels being refuelled, here are two views: I find it all rather Laira-esque! It seemed right to park an Airfix tank wagon outside; it adds to the atmosphere. Not bad for a wagon built by my husband when he was only about 10 years old. Hornby make an up-to-date version of the model (R8006) in a grey colour scheme and with better painting. But if you fancy buying the original R516 version second-hand, just be sure all the bits are there. Fabricating missing parts would not be easy. In summary, a lovely model, but not as “Snap-Fit” as Hornby suggests.

I have a couple of photographs of Class 71/HAs hauling the Golden Arrow in which the first two coaches behind the locomotive are Mk2 corridor firsts, painted in Southern green. One photo is dated September 1964. The other is dated c.1965. In that photo, the lead vehicle behind E5015 is a PMV, then the two Mk2 FKs, followed by the Golden Arrow Pullmans. My question is who were these coached provided for? After all, if you could afford a 1st Class fare, the Pullman supplement would be a financial triviality. Or was it the privacy of the compartments that was attractive (though Pullmans had coupés)? And did passengers in these coaches get access to the Trianon Bar? Answers to this puzzle gratefully received!

This is a bit of a problem photo! It's very grainy. But here it is photoshopped. A case of severe application of shadows and highlights. I think what you can JUST see is a large yellow panel and a headcode panel. But they are very faint. Just couln't expose any of the bogie detail. Maybe other photoshoppers can do better?

I often get perilously close being seduced by “it’s a good price”, either buy it now or auction. Recently it was some rather fine Hornby Stanier 50’ vans. They went very cheaply in two auctions. I even sat there watching the auctions tick through. But I didn’t bid; they really didn’t fit in my collection. What really was the pleasure in placing a winning bid for something I fundamentally didn’t want? I suppose I now have a notion of a “good buy” which is that it is a good price and it fills a hole in my collection. Doesn’t always work. I, too, have the beautiful Heljan Metropolitan electric locomotive which has no useful function.

I have great affection for them. At a critical period in my life they took me to and from Paddington to see my family in South Wales. They were then green, and the coaches maroon. Not by chance that is the period I now model. Only one Hymek, though - in green.

I used the Roxey mouldings window grilles with great success. Although Roxey mouldings offer the detailing kit, before splashing the cash, bear in mind that Hornby have produced a much better version (R60020 and variants).

Here are the semaphore signals at Llandudno, Wales. Llandudno is a terminal station with 3 platforms. It is not a busy station; it has about 2 trains an hour. One of the least frequent services it hosts is that to Blaenau Ffestiniog. The signal is shown pulled off for that service. It is a beautiful run down the Conwy valley until you traverse the Ffestiniog tunnel and are suddenly in the different, harsh, grey, world of slate of Blaenau Ffestiniog itself. The Transport for Wales Class 197 trains, built by CAF, used on this service are new, comfortable and immaculately kept. And since it is Wales, all notices and announcements are bilingual, including the maker’s plate. teeinox

The OP’s question is about the availability of BSKs. In R-T-R the pickings are thin. Faced with the same problem of finding a BSK to run with my Collett “Sunshine” coaches, I eventually bought a matching “Sunshine” BCK to go with them. These are elderly mouldings and this is my experience of updating them. I have 3 such coaches, one each of the Mainline, Replica Railways and Bachmann C77 (Second/Third corridor) productions, and one Replica Railways E159 brake composite. The maroon Mainline C77, despite having the correct height corridor windows, is probably the least satisfactory having noticeable body-bowing, lining under the windows which is bowed too, and a light shade of maroon you may not care for. The Replica and Bachmann versions have lowered, and so incorrect, windows on the corridor side, but far less bowing and better decoration. My E159 Brake Composite is the Replica Railways version in crimson and cream and here it is: It even comes with an end board for you to fit if you wish. The corridor windows are the correct height, and the body is straight. The livery is so good that I bought a spare C77 crimson and cream body from Replica Railways for £2 and replaced the maroon Mainline one with it. All chassis, bodies and interiors are interchangeable within each diagram, as are the push-fit bogies of the Mainline and Replica versions. The Bachmann bogie is its standard screw fitting which give a far better ride without body rock; the Mainline and Replica versions need stabilising. Mainline and Replica ones originally came with plastic wheels which need changing. Hornby replacements always fit; Bachmann ones can be a bit tight. Bachmann has the best packaging. The inner sleeves of the Mainline and Replica Railways boxes need trimming to fit properly. Some Replica Railways examples are marked “Seconds”. They are not as far as I can see. On buying second-hand, I have had no problems. They are robust coaches. The only points to watch are that all the roof ventilators are present and correct, and as far as Bachmann is concerned, they sold the BCK as a BSK and the C77 as a composite. Avoid those. I run mine with Hornby Hawksworth stock and have converted them to use Hornby close couplers. Three have cams for kinematic coupling; the BCK does not (I ran out of cams!). They are fine coaches and look the part with the Hawksworth coaches, though they need a tiny adjustment to raise the height. The interiors need painting, too, but they are easy to disassemble if care is taken.

We visited Bognor Regis today for fish and chips at Yanni’s (excellent!) and to buy a few bits at Squires. But our other aim was to photograph the semaphore signals on some rather fine gantries at Bognor Regis station. So here they are: Bognor is not really a big station, but it is a terminal, and a fairly busy one. It is immaculately kept. There are 3 full length platforms and a fourth very short one. Thus, the gantries: that on the left controlling the exits from platforms 1 and 2, on the right from platform 3 and the short platform 4. I suspect the gantries have been there a long time. In David Brown’s book “Southern Electric” volume 2 on page 168, there is a photo of the booster locomotive CC2 arriving at Bognor in 1946, hauling a solitary LMS 50’ van. Just behind the van can be seen, very faintly, a fragment of one of these gantries. Looking at the left-hand gantry, just to its right, in the distance you can just see the signal box, a Southern Railway “Moderne” creation. Entertainingly, there is a bus stop just by it, called “Signal Box”! The signal box was built in 1938 at the time of the “Portsmouth No. 2” (Mid-Sussex) electrification. Additional works included extending the platforms to accommodate 12 coach trains which would have had the (in)famous “Bognor” buffets in some consists. The box originally had 66 levers, and with typical Southern Railway economy, all control of signals and points was mechanical. You can see a nice specimen of a Southern Railway type ground signal between the two gantries. We also went to Chichester on our trip and dropped in at Kim’s Bookshop in South St., Chichester, just up from the station. Four floor-to-ceiling stacks of railway books, including some rarer items. Well worth stopping by. teeinox

Well, it’s taken far longer than expected to deal with the underframe and bogies. To begin with the underframe, there was not a lot there to start with, as the photo shows: No cross trussing, a bizarre moulding for the dynamo, and just a half-hearted vacuum brake cylinder with no rodding. So considerable reconstruction was required. My aim was not perfection, but to make something which was adequately convincing. I used the Hornby coach underframe as my guide. The cross trussing was fairly easy to fabricate with plastic strip. The vacuum cylinders were trickier. What there is, is about the right width, but not high enough. And there is no piston. I fabricated the piston from two surplus buffers and made the rest of the linkage from plasticard strip. As for the dynamo, I just stuck a dynamo moulding I happened to have on top of the strange moulding. Everything was then finished off with a coat of black paint to remove the shiny plastic look. It all turned out rather well. As for the bogies, these needed sorting to accommodate Hornby/Roco close couplings. This went well, except that after setting the clearances involved, I discovered that the pins attaching the bogies to the underframe were so undersized that they allowed about 4mm play fore and aft! The play has been reduced, but not eliminated, by washering out the bottom of the pin to tighten the assembly. As a by-product, this has eliminated body rock with the result that the coach behaved perfectly on its test run, with the bogies running very freely. So while function was good, appearance was not. To help disguise the emaciated “look”, I glued a strip of plasticard along the top of the sideframes. This did indeed narrow the gap between the bogie sideframes and the solebars, just about enough. At a casual glance, it passes, but it isn’t really too fabulous. But this is the “no cost” solution which was my aim. Here is a close-up of how the bogie looks, along with a slice of the underframe: So that is the end of the story of renovating my £11.75 purchase without spending a penny more. This photo shows the state of the coach after renovation: And here it is in the centre of an early 1960s Cumbrian Coast consist, hauled by a Co-Bo: It looks at home between the other 2 coaches. So, is it a Silk purse? No, and it cannot be unless, at least, the bogies are changed for something better and the glazing improved. Doing that means spending significant money as well as uplifting other areas such as the moulded handrails. But, is it a Sow’s ear, or to put it another way, a complete waste of time and money? No, it’s better than that; the renovations have succeeded in making a quite respectable layout coach. Am I tempted to invest further? On balance, I think not. It is not a coach I would keep if something better came out. But I have certainly had a good £11.75 worth of entertainment renovating it!

You are so right! But considering a Comet solution focuses on the fundamental problem which is how to achieve flush glazing which is optically decent when using moulded plastic sides which have deep apertures. My view is that the modern attempts by Hornby and Bachmann still have a prismatic affect which, while acceptable, is still not right. And that is not a criticism: what other solution is there when dealing with a moulded plastic body? The virtue of Comet is that the etched sides are thin, so simple glazing can be employed and so, optically, a good flush glazing effect can be achieved. But then, winding the clock back 60 years ago to an R-T-R offering of the day, that is what Hornby-Dublo did with their Super Detail coaches! It has always been a matter of debate and criticism as to why they retained the lithographed tinplate sides. I wonder if they looked at contemporary offerings, mainly Tri-ang, and decided the look of the windows was unacceptable and retaining the tinplate for the sides was the only solution?

Quite so, and here is an example; Mainline Highflyer is about to set off double-heading Bachmann Glory on a heavy 13-coach West Country express over the Dainton Bank, authentically recreated on my kitchen worktop. First coach in the consist is another Mainline gem, the Collett “Sunshine” SK. Usually, because of the power difference, the Bachmann works first; and it’s got the crew which the Mainline no longer has. Struck me that another interesting pairing would be the Dapol class 22 piloting the Mainline Warship, though photographs suggest that may have only been prototypical practice in the early days before both classes got their yellow noses.

Yes, its possible to paint the inside of the apertures with black paint (I mulled over the idea). But doing it neatly is another matter and it would need to be very glossy to merge with the appearance of the glazing. Would it work? I don't know. I tried it on a small scale elsewhere and wasn't taken. But I could be wrong. As for Hornby windows (I assume you are referring to their most modern variety of LMS coach), they are individual mouldings and are easy (too easy, some might say) to remove. The window ventilator detail is painted onto the clear plastic, which is O.K. The problems are two. One is that the window ventilator detail has to be removed totally from the Mainline coach to accommodate them. The other is that one is sacrificing a Hornby coach for the privilege, and they do not come cheap. But if there was a sacrificial Hornby coach around, it might be worth a punt! Many thanks for your suggestions.

Thank you for your various comments and suggestions. So, bearing in mind my target of no extra expenditure at this point, here is how I got on with the body, the roof, and the glazing. The main defect of the body shell is the window ventilator detail. In the lavatory windows that detail is completely missing. While the horizontal part of the frame was easy to fabricate from plastic strip, the frame round the rest of the ventilator was beyond me, at least for now. On the main windows, the draught excluders are missing: their absence make the ventilators look curiously flat. Making two 4mm by 0.25mm leaves to represent them was just too tiny to handle, so I compromised with a thicker single piece. Turning to the roof, its detail is nicely moulded, with separate shell ventilators applied. They should have been torpedo ones on this coach, M3868M, but I either have to live with that, or for correctness, change its number to a later one. I chose living with it. At the roof ends, the thickness of the moulding is very obvious, and the roof overhang too great. I left the overhang alone, but tapered the inside of the moulding so that the roof ends appears both thinner and of a reasonably constant thickness. Black paint provided disguise. Here is the end view compared with that of a Hornby coach. It looks quite respectable, especially after I replaced the original ridiculously small “A” markings with something of the right size, colour, and in the correct position. As for the cantrails, I put a piece of black tape along them, and painted the rest BR maroon. Again, a paint job that disguises their overscale thickness. The gangway connectors look a trifle wonky: I shall have to try straightening them, as well as give them a dust (photos are cruel)! And so to the glazing, where the problems really began. Replacing the “bottle glass” manufacturer’s provision is not simple. As designed, the two glazing strips hold the model together, the underframe and roof with clips, the body by the glazing locking into the window apertures. To enable this, these strips have to slide vertically into the body moulding. So the body sides are vertical on the inside, but curved on the outside to provide the correct external profile. This results in window apertures that vary in depth from about 1mm at the top to about 2.5mm at the bottom. Consequently, the flush glazing had to be made really thick to disguise this, which leads to the opaque bottle glass effect. It’s a very clever method of construction, but replacing the glazing means finding other ways to hold the coach together: see below. As for alternative glazing, SE FInecast make replacement windows, but having dumped them previously for poor optical effect, they were not an option. Lazerglaze would be ideal, but this coach is not in the catalogue. That just left plain glazing strip. The lavatory windows were obscured with a thin wash of B.R. Inter-city grey paint, which worked well in representing the translucency of the prototype. But while plain glazing does nothing to hide the depth of the apertures, at least one can now actually see the (now painted) interior detail: What the photo highlights is how crude the window ventilator detail is, as well as the thickness of the window apertures, though you only notice that from some angles. It doesn’t shout in one’s face as much as might be expected, at least from a distance, but this whole area remains unsatisfactory. As an incidental, you can also see the single leaf compartment doors. They should be double; a gracious LMS feature whose absence somehow really annoys me! Since removal of the original glazing meant there was no longer anything to hold the whole caboodle together, its function was partly replaced by a couple of bolts between the interior and the underframe. However, the roof is presently just an interference fit. I shall have to find a solution, but just gluing it down would be an admission of failure! So here is the coach coupled to a modern Hornby one. Looks the part, and perhaps shows up just how drab Hornby’s attempt at maroon is. Next is the underframe and bogies. That will probably take me some weeks searching around in the spares box for suitable components. So stay tuned for the next episode!

I have one Mainline warship. Paid a lot for mine: £24.50. Lights were changed to LEDs and the marker lights separately lit, so looks good. It has one split gear, but the other is intact - so far! Its resulting pulling power seems to be about one coach! So it operates in multple with a Bachmann one. It is fabulously noisy: a bit like the real thing!

This coach was on eBay in a bundle of two (the other was a Replica railways ex-LMS open third) at a bargain price of £23.50, including postage, for the pair. So this cost £11.75, and some of you may say it was not worth that; you may be right! Apparently, it’s a descendant of an Airfix model first produced in 1976, so not up to modern standards. But if you want an ex-LMS period III composite, and the London Midland was very fond of such composites, there are few other R-T-R choices. The other contenders are Hornby’s truly awful Stanier Period III composite dating from 1977, or Bachmann’s lovely “Porthole” composite which is not really a Period III coach. This is what we started with: The coach has many cons. As you can see, there is the grim “bottle” glazing with its horribly deep window reveals. Then, the emaciated bogies, an interior where the compartment doors are single, not double leaf as they should be, underframe detail which is both minimal and impressionistic, a cantrail design which is plain crude, and to cap off the cons, the hated tension-lock couplings. And for the pros, the livery is nicely executed in Mainline’s characteristic “bright” maroon which looks good on this coach, giving it a rather attractive “fresh out of the works” look. And the lining is crisp. The interior seating is nicely moulded, the roof detail is well done, and both the end profile and side elevation look “right”. Dimensionally, it scales at the correct 60’ length. All in all, it does capture the “feel” of a Stanier coach. So I thought it worth a go to see what could be done. But this being a question of "Sow’s ear" and "Silk purse", the target was to make a passable layout coach, but not to spend any more money on it. So, as the work proceeds, I shall let you know whether I could stick to my plan, starting with the body, roof, and glazing, and then the underframe and bogies.

Many thanks for the replies. The situation was clear on inter-regional workings, and "borrowing" coaches. But what I was interested in was that the Western Region seemed to have absorbed quite a number of, in particular, ex-LMS Stanier coaches for its internal services. Ditto the case mentioned above of the Bulleid coaches: painted maroon and with a W prefix. I would have assumed Western Region had plenty of stock of its own, so my question is why did it do this?

Apparently the Western Region had quite a collection of ex-LMS and even some Bulleid coaches working on its internal services in the very early 1960s. If so, what types did it have? And Why?