Recently I undertook a little project to breathe new life into some old Hornby coaching stock. This was mainly focused on painting and coupling but I did briefly mention the possibility of adding lighting to bring a whole new dimension to a model with out-of-date tooling.
Those of you who follow me on Twitter may have seen my continued effort to freshen up my old stock in my undertaking of recommissioning a Lima Class 121:
So I realise there hasn’t really been a layout update since May! The last you will have seen is the work I undertook to permanently fix my two base boards together by building a new underframe.
This enabled me to properly complete the ballasting over the gap between the two boards as seen here…
You may notice that there are two types of ballast here. The reason behind this dates back to the expansion project I undertook last year when I happen to use a different type of ballast on the outer loop. For consistency purposes I’ve re-ballasted the entire layout using this new mixture.
Now we’ve come to the end of this project I want to briefly talk about cost. You might be wondering – Is it more economical to upgrade old stock or to simply buy replacements with modern tooling?
Let’s break down the cost per coach.
<< Part 2: Coupling || Prologue: Cost >>
So now you’ve got freshly painted coaches with closer coupling. Now I’m going to show you how to make some gangway connectors to really complete the look!
Here’s what you’re going to need to make:
<< Part 1: Painting || Part 3: Gangway Connectors >>
One of the main reasons for embarking on this little project was to sort out the spacing between the coaches. Whilst the old Lima/Hornby D-Ring type tension locks are functional, they have since been superseded by slimmer and more compact variants that leave a more realistic spacing between rolling stock.
Image from Hornby
The majority of modern OO Gauge rolling stock is now fitted with NEM pockets, a standard design used across manufacturers so users can interchange their coupling types. Continue reading
