Model Railway Forum

Happy New Year to you all and I hope you had a lovely Christmas.

I received an unexpected gift of three pre-owned Hornby carriages - R.429 GWR 57 foot composite; R.931 GWR Composite; R.932 GWR Brake Third. The standard length coaches are part of |Hornby's Silver Seal collection.

They're a great additon to my layout and a really thoughtful present from my eldest son.

Unfortunately some of the couplings are broken and two don't run at all well over my Peco code 75 electrofrogs - a common problem with old rolling stock I am led to believe.

I feel the solution is to replace all of the bogies resolving the running problem and introducing more modern couplings - maybe Peter's Spares or DCC Concepts. The 57 foot coach seems to be a clip in and the others have the brass rivet type assembly - see pictures attached.

I most definitely want to run this gift on my layout so any thoughts or advice or your experiences gratefully received.

The clip type bogie shouldn't be too much of a problem, spare bogies can be obtained second hand, or new from a spares dealer such as Peter's Spares.

If the couplings are OK replacement 14mm coach wheels are also available.

Bachmann sell spare bogies, but these will need modification to fit to Hornby carriages.

The rivetted bogie requires more work, I have usually drilled the brass rivet out and replaced it with a 4BA nut and bolt. (3mm metric will also work) I glue the nut to stop it vibrating off when running. A dab of paint works well to do this. The replacement bogie will also need a suitable sized hole and maybe a washer.

I have a number of older carriages and wagons and I'm in the process of swapping out the wheelsets for them. I run code 100 Peco and even on those the older ones foul the frog or catch part on points.

For most of them this change has worked well. Changing the wheels was very easy on the majority of them.

Good luck.

Never chuck the old wheels and bogies. People like me find them soo useful!

Thank you for all the wisdom.