teeinox

Here is my Lima Class 92 023, “Ravel”. Our driver has a bottle of “Cuvée des cheminots” on the driver’s desk. It’s a present for a mate of his at Dollands Moor for services rendered.

Most interesting! I guess what I am seeing in the photo, not knowing Dover too well, is the Town Yard on the right, and the car loading/unloading ramp on the left with the cartics arriving/leaving? But what is Snargate Radio, and what role did it play? Was this the main information channel? What sort of information was transmitted between you and Dunkerque? And in what language(s) was the conversation conducted? What was it like dealing with our friends in Dunkerque?

SED Freightman: many thanks for all of this! Basically, it looks like you could get anywhere in France, Belgium, Netherlands or Switzerland the next day. In contrast, Spain and Portugal, 6-7 days! I think, too, that this document dates from the early 1980s. It looks as if it is from before Sealink’s privatisation, which was 1984. I was looking at some web-sites about border stations. Irun-Hendaye was clearly a real problem with a cramped and congested site, coupled with RENFE’s (at the time) persistent late running and SNCF’s equally persistent difficulty in finding motive power. The Portbou/Cerbère crossing was just as diificult. We don’t have any photos of the Irun/Hendaye installation in our archive, but we do have a couple of Portbou/Cerbère. Here they are, dating from 1979: And for detail of the extraordinary wheel-change installation: I’ve been told that the high speed line built from Perpignan to Barcelona was, apparently at the insistence of the Spanish authorities, built with facilities such as loops to allow it to be used for freight. Anything to get rid of the problems and delays of gauge change, at least as far as Barcelona port. Incidentally, was there any equivalent from the Portbou/Cerbère crossing to the Irun/Hendaye to Dunkerque Transfesa train?

Many thanks for all your research, Simon and SED Freightman. Is it possible from all this information to establish what would be an overall timetable for, say, a perishables train from leaving Southern Spain, the main growing area, to it arriving in a terminal depot in the U.K.? If we base the timetable around the overnight block train from Hendaye to Dunkerque, is there any information on how long typical transits took across Spain to get to Irun/Hendaye? It would not have been quick. Spain is a big country, and its railways were not fast. My understanding is that the 09.30/10.00 ferry took most of the traffic from this service, with the overspill on the !2.00 sailing, as you describe. So, a speculative timetable might look like: Day 1: From early morning to evening: Southern Spain to Irun. Late evening leave Hendaye for Dunkerque. Day 2: Early morning arrival at Dunkerque. Take 09.30/10.00 or 12.00 ferry to Dover. Take afternoon services to Tyne and Bescot, arriving in the evening. That looks to me like the best part of 48 hours. Not such a problem for onions, but did soft fruit and salad vegetables have to travel Interfrigo because of the time it took? And if the Interfrigo was ice-cooled, did the ice last that long, or was it replenished en-route? teeinox

Simon, many thanks for the detailed information: amazing! I wonder, though, does anyone know how things were organised at Dunkerque? Were there specific trains from, say, Spain, that were timetabled to make a particular ferry connection? And was train ferry capacity “pre-booked” for specific services and numbers of wagons, or was there some sort of queuing system at Dunkerque? The same question applies to the other way round, too, when leaving Dover on the ferry back to continental Europe. teeinox

This is supposition: was the treatment of trains different depending on whether customs clearance was required at Dover, or whether it would be done inland? One of the things I understand about Hither Green Continental Freight Depot was that customs clearance was done there. If a set of wagons destined for the Depot came off the ferry, there would therefore be no need to tarry at Dover. And given they were perishable goods, the sooner they got to Hither Green, the better. On the other hand, a post on this forum suggests that if customs clearance was required at Dover, this would be on an individual wagon basis, and much shunting between yards could be required to form a train ready to take the cleared wagons forward. So, indeed, how did it all work?

Thank you for your reply. Yes, it would be most interesting to know what the routings were. Also, as part of the Kent Coast electrification, did Dover Town sidings get any overhead electrification for the "HA" locomotives? I have never seen any in pictures, but even if originally provided, they may not have lasted long!

The WTT extract you provided was most interesting, thank you. One question I would like to ask is about how things were organised at Dover. When a service was scheduled to or from Dover Marine, what did that mean? Did it mean that the train solely consisted of wagons originating from or destined for the train ferry? And did the wagons first go to Dover Town for remarshalling and locomotive change, and in the case of arriving wagons, be stacked in a “queue” in Dover Town awaiting their turn on the ferry? I suppose what I am asking is how did it all work at Dover? The other question is, how were the routes between Dover and Hither Green selected? There were the choices of via Tonbridge, Maidstone East or Chatham. Obviously, if there were a calling point en-route, like Faversham, that would mean a routing via Chatham. But if there were no intermediate calling points, what happened then? I assume the routing was laid down in the timetable and maybe depended on the type of train, but was there flexibility on the day for engineering work, congestion, or other reasons?

Folks, Thank you for your replies on what I thought was a rather niche topic! Anyway, the photo of the Dubonnet wagon was very striking, so, cheekily, I did some photoshopping to see whether I could remove the colour cast. So here it is for your delectation! On the right, you can now just see the platform of a BR brake van. But where was the photo taken? teeinox

Many thanks for all your replies. They are most informative. I found an article on Wikepedia, I think on freight through Dover. According to that, the traffic imported into Dover via the train ferry included fruit and vegetables, chemicals, and nuclear fuels between the continent and the BNFL complex at Sellafield. One of the chemical suppiers appeared to be a company called ETRA, based in Zurich. Exports included china clay from south-west England to Switzerland and steel products from Teesside to France and Spain. That fits with jonhall drawing attention to the geographical and economic split both in the UK and in continental Europe which influenced the choice of Harwich or Dover for particular traffics. In addition, apart from the dedicated trains for perishable traffic to Hither Green and sometimes to the LMR (I have an undated photo of a blue class 71 with a "BA" headcode), there were no other trains dedicated to ferry traffic. Onward distribution otherwise was as individual wagons conveyed in BR's wagonload network. Seem about right?

Many thanks for the photos. I have been looking round for photos of actual consists for the early 1960s period. They are very hard to find. One line of attack led to Hither Green Continental Depot. By the look of things, trains that went there from Dover were quite homogenous - rakes of Transfesa or Interfrigo. That makes sense because the Depot, as I understand it, was built to handle imported fruit and vegetables. Otherwise, it is less clear. There were a fair number of tank wagons about, a lot on 4-wheel chassis. How common bogie tank wagons were at that time, I don't know. A train ferry was capable of delivering up to 40 wagons, depending upon the length. So apart from the rakes destined for Hither Green Continental Depot, in what sort of consists were the others transported, and to where? I assume that Hither Green Sorting sidings might have been an obvious destination for re-marshalling to onward destinations. And were they mixed with ordinary BR freight traffic to and from Dover or were they in dedicated consists? Information would be appreciated.

Many thanks. The Dublo TSL ones, though battered, I have kept as original as possible, with the exception of painting the chain shackles (which are cast on) yellow and adding the missing one! The only thing I backed off was from painting the solebars red: the Hornby Dublo construction made that problematical. Others have gone a lot further, like changing the chassis but keeping the body.

Funny you should say that! I have 2 (ancient) Hornby Dublo Traffic Services Ltd tank wagons, but not sure if they are period. The Triang/Hornby Transfesa vans: inaccurate and a bit garish (they were never that bright blue). What I fancy is a continental European bogie tank wagon: black, grim and atmospheric! Tony

So, eventually a Bachmann Queen Mary turned up on eBay at a price I was prepared to pay. Which was £13.12 plus P&P for a ratty example; no box, no couplings, filthy wheels and covered with dust to a thickness that would be 150mm/6” in prototypical terms. But what do you expect for £13.12? Besides, it was perfectly renovatable! So here it is, on the end of a train we might imagine making its way from Hither Green Continental Depot to Dover Marine:

I’m looking for information about the freight traffic that class 71s hauled in the early 1960s. There are plenty of photos of them hauling the Golden Arrow or Night Ferry. And the excellent Southern Way Special Issue 14 by Simon Lilley and John Wenyon tells me quite a lot about their role in parcels traffic. But my understanding is that they had quite a number of freight duties too. There is one photo in the Simon Lilley and John Wenyon book of them hauling a continental freight, one of a coal train, and another at the head of an oil tanker train at Ashford. And that’s the lot. Does anyone know where I can find more information on their freight duties in the early 60s? I’m looking for stuff like type of train, types and numbers of wagons, routings, and formations. Maybe all this is lost in the mists of times, but…….perhaps someone knows something. Hoping to be lucky!

As a schoolboy I travelled on the Uxbridge branch: F, P (Metadyne equipped - an extraordinary noise as it wound up and down!) and later A stock. I still have some half built F stock. Scratch built, but the problems, like the complicated roof, are just too daunting. I've settled for the Heljan locomotive. A lovely thing to look at, but a noisy transmission on my example. What it needs is a Metropolitan milk van: I scratch built one of those many years ago: an early plasticard experiment!

Many thanks for all your comments and research on my last post. Where we left things was that my aim was to renovate the coach so that it would look reasonable running with more modern Hornby coaches. This is the story of how things went. So read on about the thrills and spills! ROOF As suggested by markw, the roof profile and ventilators appear to be those designed for the Collett “Sunshine” coach; not right for a LMS coach. Whereas I had thought that the wrong roof profile caused the roof to be too low, it turned out that raising the coach a fraction resolved the problem. As for the ventilators, the best solution was to cut them down to size because as a shell ventilator they are well moulded, just too tall. They are moulded with a spigot which fits into a hole in the roof. The mode of assembly appears to have been to put them in place “dry” and then apply a dab of glue onto the piece of spigot that protruded inside the body shell. So, just by snapping off that piece, most of the ventilators came out without trouble. Then I had to cut them down to size. This was a tricky process, but it worked for most, though some are cut a tad too short. Then they were glued back in place directly onto the roof. WINDOWS The deep-set windows needed to be given a more of a flush look to match the Hornby coaches. The only option I could find was SEF Flushglaze. I read the various opinions in this forum about the product and did not come away enthused. But on balance it seemed worth a try, so I got a pack. The big windows seemed to work well. However, the Flushglaze created a clumsy “Bottle glass” effect in the ventilator windows, and no glazing was supplied for the tiny panes at their extreme ends. Instead, I glazed them with plain glazing strip. But in mixing glazing types, I’ve ended up with a bit of an uneasy combination which I am not sure looks right. COACH ENDS Besides being rather clumsy, the gangway connectors were misshapen. For one of them, I glued in pieces of plasticard to keep the sides of the connector vertical. For the other, the bits box came up with a tailboard. It was tidied up and then glued onto the connector. It holds the connector in shape, hides the clumsiness and looks right for a strengthener. I sanded off the moulding marks from the buffers and reduced those on the headstocks. Here is a photo of the end of the coach compared with a Hornby one. While you can see the difference in roof profile, it’s not too bad. However, viewing this photo led me to check the Flushglaze glazing with a straight edge. I found that it projects slightly beyond the sides, which is one reason why it doesn’t look quite right. This was my first go using Flushglaze, and If I were using it again, I might shim the fixing flanges so that, when fitted, the glazing was slightly recessed similarly to that on the Hornby coaches. The LMS classified this type of coach as “QF”, and according to Jenkinson and Essery, the B.R. equivalent was TO/SO. From the way the seats were crammed in (60 in a 57’ vehicle), it was more of a TTO/TSO! The Hornby coach has the letter “A” on either side, while the Replica does not. Does anyone know what it stands for, and should the Replica be so adorned? UNDERFRAME, BOGIES & WHEELS The trussing bar supporting the voltage regulator was distorted in an upward curve. I cut the supports at the top and put in a piece of plasticard to push the assembly down to level it. The bogies are fine, though rather compressed vertically compared with the Hornby equivalents. The plastic wheels, while they run very well, are undersized at about 13.8mm. As a result, the coach rides slightly low. I tried but failed to remove these wheels. The bogie side frames are incredibly tough and unbending, and I was beginning to use more brute force than I was comfortable with. Bear in mind this plastic is 30 years old and I did not want a sudden fracture. While the wheels have been left in-situ for now, this is a setback I shall have to revisit. A consequence of their being undersize was that I had to lift the coach body by about 0.3mm to raise it to be level at cantrail height with the Hornby coaches. This gave the visual effect I wanted, and, amazingly, with just that alteration the roof heights came level despite their different profiles. COUPLINGS My first choice would have been to install a close coupling mechanism. There were some Keen System mechanisms in the bits box, but installing them meant having to cut a big hole in the underframe to give wheel clearance. This did not seem like a good idea. So, as the coach was to be a strengthener, one bogie was fitted with one of my standard Simplex couplings. The other one was equipped with a NEM socket containing a Hornby close coupler. The NEM socket is screwed to the coupling extension on the bogie and can rotate around the screw, but there is no centring mechanism, and it hangs lower than I would like. It’s all a bit of a kludge, but it seems to work O.K. And on the straight, the distance to an adjacent gangway connector is as good as you get with the proper close-coupling between Hornby Staniers. INTERIOR The solution to the warping of the interior was to cut off the end which was particularly bad and glue it back on, straight. This got rid of the “hump-back” in the tables which had been so noticeable. However, I could not eliminate a slight corkscrewing in the moulding which means that it is still not quite level. Then it was a matter of painting. My guess was that in B.R. days the seats would have been a dowdy red. However, the LMS did use some brighter fabrics, and not having dowdy red in my paintbox, I chose a brighter red. As for the table-tops, the pictures of vestibule coaches in Jenkinson and Essery typically show them covered in a sort of dark coloured mat, I would guess to protect the table finish. In B.R. days I fear they would have been covered with grubby grey, peeling vinyl, so grey paint it had to be. Here is how it looks: Happy to change the horrible table colour if anybody can tell me what was correct for B.R. times! PAINTING Given that the maroon body finish is very good and my repainting skills are not so good, I decided to live with the misaligned lining. Painting was confined to picking out the door furniture, painting the cantrails black, touching up the roof where the manufacturer’s grey spray had not done a great covering job, and giving the underframe a coat of black paint to remove the “plastic” look. PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER Dismantling had been a risky business because I had to bend the coach sides so much to release the spigots. So I drastically reduced the projection of the end spigots: the middle ones remained as is. Despite this surgery, it holds together fine. Here is the finished article next to a Hornby coach: To my mind, it co-exists very reasonably with its much younger Hornby neighbour. So, for your further entertainment, here are photos of two formations featuring the Replica coach. The first is of the inter-corridor set strengthened with the Replica coach. We can imagine it heading for the South-West to be combined at some point with ex-GWR stock for its onward journey to Penzance. Naturally, it is hauled by a Warship, but not this one: the Mainline Warship is barely capable of hauling two coaches on the flat! The second photo illustrates a Western Region mixed formation. In John Hodge’s and Stuart Davies’s excellent book “Railways and Industry in the Tondu Valleys: Bridgend to Treherbert”, there is a shot of the 11.38 SO Neath – Treherbert train on 16th April 1960. This was a 4-coach corridor train which seemed to consist of 2 ex-LMS and 2 ex-GWR coaches, including a Hawksworth CK still in carmine and cream. Motive power was a 56xx tank locomotive. This is my re-creation of it, though almost certainly it never had the vestibule coach. Modeller’s licence! So what have I got for my time and money? Well, I have ended up with a very acceptable layout coach of a much-needed type for an outlay of just under £25. And if Hornby or Bachmann were to bring out a model of a general service vestibule coach, would I ditch this one? Not necessarily.

Many thanks for your replies. Queen Mary it is then. Now to find a Bachmann one at reasonable cost!

The ferry van train I have consists of a Hornby E5000 (later class 71) electric locomotive and a set of Hornby ferry vans for it to haul. Prototypically, it would be on the Hither Green - Dover run. The period is about 1960. The locomotive is in the original Southern coach stock green, lined and no yellow warning panel. The ferry vans bear the "flying crate" symbol. The pictures I have seen are all later, and show such trains with no brake van. But in 1960, would they have had a brake van, and if so what type: BR standard, odinary Southern, Queen Mary or something else? Hope someone knows the answer!

Many thanks for this information: it explains a lot. I immediately had a look at my Collett Sunshine coach. You are absolutely right. The roof profile is the same and the same roof ventilators too. Neither right for an LMS coach. What a strange decision! Saving on tooling costs, I suppose. Body shape, too, pretty much the same, as well as the type and position of the door furniture.

I model late 50s/early 60s Western Region and at that time the Western Region had quite a few ex-LMS coaches on its books which it used on internal trains mixed with ex-GWR coaches. Ex-LMS coaches also frequently appeared in the South-West on inter-regional trains, either as complete sets or as portions coupled to ex-GWR stock. So I felt I needed some Stanier coaches to form an LMS “Inter-Corridor” set to represent a portion through working. It consists of four coaches, a BSK, CK, SK and BSK. The CK is a Bachmann “Porthole”, the rest are Hornby Stanier period III. But as Jenkinson and Essery tell us, the LMS built almost as much open (in LMS parlance “vestibule”) as compartment stock. While I suspect that to provide adequate luggage capacity it was mainly compartment stock that went to the South-West, I still hankered after a vestibule coach to complete my collection of typical LMS types. Suitable models of LMS vestibule coaches are hard to find. Both Hornby and Bachmann offer vestibule coaches, but of rare types built in tiny numbers. That left only one R-T-R candidate, the venerable late 1980s Replica Railways 12222, a model of the D1915 excursion vestibule coach. They were common enough; the LMS built over 370 of them. So, one being on offer at the bargain price of £19 including postage, I took the plunge. On unpacking, the coach appeared to have never been used. Intriguingly, inside the box I found this tiny slip of paper: The provenance of this model has been discussed on this forum, and the problems Replica Railways had with Kader, who manufactured this model, are well documented on the Replica Railways web-site under “Company history”. However, the involvement of Dapol is a new one to me. Can anyone shed any light? Here is a side-view of the model: The body moulding is rather good, apart from the strangely huge roof ventilators. But the lack of flush windows stands out. The paintwork finish is good, though the lining below the cantrail is crude and that below the windows is too low. The interior is a fine moulding, though warped and fractured in places. The underframe is not bad; most trussing is there, the most visible parts of the brake gear are present, but the dynamo is just terrible. As for the wheels, they are plastic and undersize, and the tension lock couplings have to go. Here is a photo of the coach end: The roof is nearer a 3-arc than the proper Stanier elliptical shape, and it is slightly too low. There are moulding lines across the buffers and headstocks. The gangway connectors look reasonable, but the outward bowing of their sides is a problem which needs a solution. Dismantling the coach was not easy. The body is held onto the chassis by three spigots on each side and it took a lot of heart-stopping bending of the body to release them without damage. But as a bonus, the trauma caused the rather cloudy glazing to fall out. So, here is the kit of parts I had to play with, including a blow-up of one of the huge roof ventilators: In deciding what alterations to make, I had to think what my aims were for what is a 30 year-old model. I settled on producing a layout coach upgraded enough to look acceptable running with the Hornby coaches. And its role would be as a strengthener, which meant that it would be at the end of the rake where the differences in lining and roof profile would not be so noticeable. I was also reluctant to replace components unless absolutely essential because this was to be a minimum cost project. It was going to be a case of what I could do simply, with the help of what the bits box might provide! So read the next instalment to find out how I got on.

Oh, you don't appreciate something until you don't have it! Anyway, congatulations on bringing the site back. Much appreciated!

Glad the site is back, but sorry the photos I previously posted are lost. But here comes a replacement photo which gives you some idea of the previous ones! Since my last post, I have completed the conversion of two further Underground sets. The first was an 8-car set of District line R stock. This set is powered by 2 Black-Beetle motor bogies, one at each end of the set. Inevitably, such motor bogies differ in power and speed for the same supply and so there is “fighting” between them. I wanted to see if the Hunt coupling could cope with this. The Hunt couplings held the train together perfectly, though the Black-Beetle moto bogies are not the most powerful things in the world! The second was an 8-car train of Q stock. This raised issues. The unpowered coaches in the train run on Trix Commonwealth bogies. The motor coach contains 2 Tenshodo motors to provide the power, and its coupling arrangements are different. In particular, its attachment point is about 1.5mm higher than on the other coaches. With Simplex couplings, this did not matter. A different type of coupling with different fixing arrangements lined up adequately with the other couplings, and Simplex couplings have a reasonable degree of tolerance of minor differences in height. Not so the Hunt couplings. The magnets couple exactly. My first approach was to allow a degree of vertical movement on the motor coach’s coupling. This did not work: the strength of the magnetism meant that the coupling bar was solid and true, with the lighter coach’s wheels consequently being lifted from the rails! So I decided to cut the motor coach coupling and re-assemble it cranked. Cutting these couplings is a curious experience. The shank is ostensibly tough and resistant to the blade, but unlike nylon or Delrin couplings, when it is cut, it is more like a crack forming than a clean cut. It is as if the material, while very rigid, has an almost granular texture that shatters under a knife. Gluing the bits together was successful, and here is the result: On the left is the Q23 motor containing the Tenshodo motors and equipped with the cranked coupling. On the right is a Q38 trailer with the standard coupling arrangement. The Q23 is a Radley Models resin casting, heavily reworked to bring it up to a decent standard. As for the Q38, I scratch-built it in 1962. So it’s in its 60th year! And prototypically, this bizarre combination was authentic, part of the charm of the District Line of yesteryear.

Ever eager to try something different for close coupling, I wandered over to the “West Hill Wagon Works” stand at a model railway exhibition to investigate their Hunt Elite Coupling product. Most of their offering is, understandably, designed for use with NEM sockets, so has the “swallow tail” fitting. I could replace my existing Roco/Hornby combinations with these, but I didn’t see an overwhelming case for this. So I cast my thoughts elsewhere to some still treasured Underground stock I scratch built out of cardboard about 50 years ago! At the time the only R-T-R bogies available were Trix Commonwealth bogies: ludicrously inappropriate for these coaches (Hammersmith and City M stock of 1936) but outstandingly light and free-running, and within my pocket money budget at the time! These bogies came equipped with the Trix version of the Peco Simplex coupling; and a very good version it is too. I still use it today on some vehicles I want to convert to Simplex couplings. However, like all such couplings, it has slop which prevents the close coupling that this type of train requires, detracting from its look. So, on explaining my problem to the West Hill Wagon Works representative, emphasising that these coaches were built, and the couplings made, before he was born, he suggested their “Couplings for Clip Socket” as a solution. These are designed for vehicles built with a clip to hold the tension lock coupling. The clip holds the coupling in place with a spigot which goes through a hole in the coupling. So, I could put a screw through this hole instead to hold the coupling in place; handy since the Trix coupling was held in place by just such a handy screw. The clip socket couplings only come in one length, but I thought it worth a punt at £14.95 for 20! There is no close-coupling unit involved, so it was a question of how close a coupling I could get with a simple bogie mounting. Not so difficult where no buffers are involved as on this stock, and conversion of the bogies was a doddle. A bit of plastic on the bogie had to be removed, and the coupling trimmed a tad to provide clearance for enough lateral swing. 10 minutes a bogie, and on the left is the unmodified bogie with the Trix Simplex coupling in place and on the right the modified version with Hunt coupling installed. In the centre is the Hunt coupling before tweaking: As for the result, here is a sideways view of the train. The coaches are almost prototypically close, with the chosen gap adequate for 2nd radius curves. The coupling looks nice, neat and unobtrusive. And the end view is neat, too. On the right is the Hunt Elite coupling. On the left is a dummy representation of a District Railway “Ward” mechanical coupler with which this stock was equipped. The appearance of the Hunt coupling is not unlike it and could with a little bit of work, be even more so. Even so, as it stands it is not a bad representation, as afficionados of Underground stock might appreciate, suitable for an Eastbound Driving Motor destined for Barking! I appreciate that this is a rather esoteric application not relevant to most, but using Hunt Elite couplings here has really improved these coaches in appearance and running. Oh, and one worry I had about magnetic couplings was that since my rolling stock spends most of its time packed in boxes, uncoupled, the magnets would have no keeper and thus lose power. Not so, our man from West Hill Wagon Works explained; they have a layer of graphite incorporated to deal with this problem. Clever, huh? A great product!

I have three types of coupling in use. Peco/Hornby Dublo Simplex. Much of my rolling stock is antique and has this coupling, but it also happens to be a very useful and neat coupling and I have equipped some modern rolling stock with it. But because of its horizontal movement, it is not compatible with self-centreing close coupling units: under light load it tends to centre and uncouple! While it can be adapted to be used in an NEM socket, this is difficult to do and results can be variable. Hornby/Roco close couplings All coaches with NEM sockets get these and some elderly coaches have been fitted out with close coupling units so that they can be equiped with close couplers too to make them compatibe with more modern coaches. This type of close coupling can be tedious to couple up if there isn't a self-centreing mechanism. Hunt elite magnetic coupling. I have just used the "clip fit" variety to replace some elderly Simplex couplings. It required minimal alteration to the bogies and works exceedingly well. No self-centreing mechanism is required because its magnetism supplies the self-centreing effect. And when it appears at the end of the train, it is barely noticeable. The coupling that I never use is the Tension Lock.