No.54 Hornby Hawksworth and Centenary Coaches – and some connectors I made earlier.

In recent posts I have detailed corridor connectors for Bachmann Collett coaches and I have touched on the Hornby Hawksworth Full Brake.

Hornby Hawksworth Coaches as bought (left) and as modified (right)

When Hornby introduced their Hawksworth coaches back in 2010 I was most impressed with the coach detail but not so happy with Hornby’s corridor connectors.

I wanted the coaches to be more closely coupled and it took me a lot of courage to remove Hornby’s moulded black plastic connectors.

Closer coupling is quickly achieved by paring away some of the plastic from the Hornby R8220 coupling to enable it to push back further into the coupling pocket.

 

For the Hawksworth coaches I adopted a ‘belt and braces’ approach and drilled through both the pocket and coupling enabling the coupling to be pinned in place. Subsequently I have discovered that there is often sufficient friction between the coupling and the pocket such that pinning may not be necessary.

Back to the corridor connectors, I had in my mind a 1964 article in the Railway Modeller detailing the use of black cartridge paper. (Forty years on and David A Smith has provided an update.)

155gm/m black card cut as per RM instructions. The dimensions chosen for the Hornby Hawksworth coaches were 27mm x 14mm

The bellows are formed by pushing together the two parts of the connector. I chose to use four folds (five panels).

I used the end plate from a Bachmann Collett coach as a pattern for the curved top

At each end of the rake of coaches the connector is fastened back using strong black buttonhole thread.

I used a rigid wooden spoon handle to tie the thread round before slipping it over the compressed bellows connector. The two end plates / rubbing plates are formed from 250mg/m card 28mm x 14.5mm.

I used good quality PVA adhesive to fix the rubbing plates on each end of the bellows and then to fasten the completed unit to the coach

Close up of connector with buttonhole thread retainers

Do they work – splendidly I would say.

Hornby Hawksworth with modified Conectors (bottom) compared to unmodified Hornby Centenary Stock (top)

Whilst on the subject of Hornby ex GWR coaches I have been asked recently about the riding qualities of Centenary Coaches. I have a rake of four ‘Hornby’ coaches which I would say run perfectly. The rake is fitted with Hornby metal wheels (R8234) and each coach weighs 145 gm, which is midway between Hornby super detail stock at 120 gm and Bachmann Mark 1s at 165 gm.

Two coaches are completely unmodified. Two coaches were bought very cheaply off eBay knowingly fitted with Kaydee couplings. I hadn’t bargained on the previous owner cutting the fixings off the bogies and glueing the Kaydees directly to the coach underframe. (How they were supposed to go round corners?) To sort the problem I bought a couple of old Airfix coaches and swapped the bogies and underframes.

All four coaches were then fitted with the original Airfix mini couplings. Hornby seem to have made some slight changes to the bogie centres and fixing point for use with their own range of couplings. When fitted with the Airfix couplings the plastic corridor connectors on the unmodified Hornby coaches would interlock. The solution was simple, couple the coaches alternately Airfix / Hornby / Airfix / Hornby.

I think cheap coaches nicely close coupled?