No.22 Six Wheel Bogies

There has been discussion on the 'net' relating to the ex Dapol /Hornby twelve wheel restaurant cars.  I have lowered the ride height of mine to run with Bachmann stock:

In order to get the buffers of the Hornby Restaurant Car to match the height of my adjacent Bachmann Mk1s it was necessary to lower the underframe on the bogies.

First it is best to take the whole coach apart.  This can be done by sliding ones finger nail between the coach side and the underframe and leavering the underframe down and out.  There are six plastic lugs to free, two at either end and two in the middle.  It is best to ‘free’ one side at a time.

With the coach completely disassembled the bogies can be removed by squeezing the top of the plastic holding pegs and pushing down and out.  With the bogies out of the way a metal file can be used to remove 1mm or more of plastic from the bogie support pillars on the underframe.  In this case the underframe is the old Dapol version without cutouts but the bogies are Hornby.

Having removed this plastic I suspected that the original plastic pegs used to hold the bogies in position no longer function and I have substituted brass bolts which I had spare from some earlier work on a Hornby Mk1 Sleeping Car.

I then had to file the heads of the bolts to ensure that there was some clearance between the bolt head and the middle axle.

Similarly it was necessary to countersink the top side of the underframe so that the ‘nut’ end of the bolt did not interfere too much with the seating.

I substituted Bachmann 14mm metal wheels in place of the original plastic Hornby wheels.  Also I have used Hornby R8220 type couplings to fit within my close coupled rake of Bachmann Mk1s.  As pictured the finished rake of coaches will run happily through Peco Medium Radius curves.

Addenda April 2015

Just added a view of Dapol's original 1988 packaging to show how the box came with two chassis. This was an item of 'new' old stock uncovered in 2014.

2014 New Old Stock