Old Triang Blood and Custard Restoration

Hey guys,

As my layout seems to be on a semi-permanent hiatus (waiting on workmen to be honest!) I am trying my best to keep myself busy and interested within the hobby doing little bits and pieces. Mostly this has been limited to hard-wiring old locos for DCC and the like, but recently I picked up a job lot of knackered coaches that I thought I could give a (cheap!) bit of TLC to and see where I end up.

This is the state of them to start with...

As you can see, the paintwork has had an odd reaction to something at some point so that is my first port of call. I took a dremel type tool with a sending tip to the "custard" or cream window surrounds.

Don't get me wrong, this is quite an extreme measure but considering these coaches were pretty destroyed already and cost me the sum total of about £6 I figured it could be worth it. I then went out to our local Wilkinson's shop and picked up a couple of tester pots of wall paint. The magnolia turned out to be too light, but the pale primrose seemed to be a reasonable colour. A couple of thinned coats and this is the result.

In my opinion it already looks a lot better! It's not a perfect colour match or anything like that, and I need to do at least one more coat of thinned primrose before I then sort out the black lining (planning on using a sharpie to be honest, nice and simple!) and re-wheel them. The only thing I'm not too sure about is being able to change the couplings on them. They are the *old* style Triang couplings, and I'm not sure it's even possible to swap them out without changing the entire bogie. I don't really want to do that because I have spare wheelsets, bearings and couplings and as so far this has cost me about £7 for 3 coaches I really want to keep costs to a minimum. Otherwise I'd just buy new coaches! Has anyone had any experience changing these couplings at all?!

Here is a picture of the couplings just to clarify what I mean, and a side by side before and after! Not too bad really...

Anyway, that's enough of my rambling. Apologies and congratulations to anyone who bothered to get this far!

Cheers,

Dom

http://www.click

 

Not that I am aware of Paul, is anyone else not able to see the pictures? I'll freely admit I usually just lurk on here to get inspiration so I don't post very often, I might have got something wrong...

 

Hey guys,

Sorry about that, it appears I am a simpleton. Do the pictures appear now?

Cheers,

Dom

 

I think i was just a moron to be honest Ed!

Yeah I have looked at that possibility, but considering a pair of bogies cost more that all 3 coaches cost in total I'm hesitant to do that! Also these are the "sealed unit" Triang coaches, so I can't see how I would actually attach them...

Cheers,

Dom

 

Yeah these ones have glued rooves, I don't really want to test the theory too much incase they just disintegrate to be honest! Also as I said, I'd be spending just over £22 just on the bogies. That's near 4 times as much as I spent on the carriages in the first place!

I've just tested them with my 08 hornby shunter and they do seem to couple OK, but I only have a straight piece of test/programming track at the moment, so who knows what will happen when they hit a curve or a point!

Cheers,

Dom

 

OK, cheers for the tip. I've only just bought the 08 to be honest, I haven't even serviced it yet!

Yeah I know about the wheels, I've done some old clerestory coaches a while ago and it made such a difference. Worst comes to the worst I can always put the old wheels back in again!

Cheers,

Dom

 

Cheers Toto, not sure I'd go that far but I'm happy playing around. I wanted to airbrush them to get some more experience with that but I couldn't work out how to remove the glazing what with the rooves being glued on. I didn't want to just destroy them completely! I know I could have used maskol but the top parts of the windows are about the size of a ball point pen nib so that ruled that one out!

Anyway, onwards and upwards!

Cheers,

Dom