Hornby (Margate) 20T Brake Van

[Darius43]

I acquired this brake van with a group of assorted wagons off eBay - it came along with the wagons I wanted.

 

 

 

It has been hanging around the place for a few years now so I decided to improve it in order to get my Mojo back into MTK mode.

 

I replaced the plastic wheels with metal ones, carved off the chunky tension locks and replaced them with NEM versions and removed the chunky moulded brake gear from the chassis.  A repaint followed with decals added from the spares box.

 

 

 

 

 

Not strictly accurate but hopefully better than the original.

 

Cheers

 

Darius

 

 

[kevinlms]

I see you've sliced off the oversized lamp, which on most models lit up. Better off without it!

 

If I remember correctly, that was the old Hornby Dublo body that Hornby Railways used on their standard LWB chassis and fitted the light, in 1974 I believe.

 

http://www.hornbyguide.com/item_year_details.asp?itemyearid=957

[Darius43]

I did slice off the light, as it was a tad overscale, and filled in the resultant hole.

 

The moulded box behind presumably contained the bulb but was empty on my example.  I was going to remove the box but needed to remove the roof to get at it.  The roof was well glued in place and I was fearful of breaking it on a removal attempt.  I painted the light box black to make it less noticeable.

 

The model had plastic tension locks with solid webs connecting them to  the chassis - looks like it dates to 1981 with this feature.

 

It is really satisfying to restore old models back into service.

 

Cheers

 

Darius

[Michael Hodgson]

2 hours ago, Darius43 said:

 

The moulded box behind presumably contained the bulb but was empty on my example.

 

 

It does on one I've got, but I think they also used the same moulding for a (cheaper?) version without the light and pickups

[Butler Henderson]

If only one side of the brake van is normally seen on the layout suggest fitting a guard figure in front of the light box on the side that is seen

[BernardTPM]

17 hours ago, kevinlms said:

If I remember correctly, that was the old Hornby Dublo body that Hornby Railways used on their standard LWB chassis and fitted the light, in 1974 I believe.

http://www.hornbyguide.com/item_year_details.asp?itemyearid=957

Same length as the HD model, but a new tool. The HD LMS brake van used GWR partitions as did their BR brake van.

Hornby 1974

Hornby Dublo circa 1960

[Butler Henderson]

The 1974 Hornby tooling made use of an adaption of their GWR Toad chassis. The lit light only existed on models made 1974-1976. Source: The Story of Rovex  Vol 3 1972-1996