HORSES for COURSES
Two Hornby LMS horseboxes arrived from a good friend at Christmas. They were intended to be barrier wagons between my Kadee coupling fitted locos and tension-lock fitted coaches, but I have been too busy to do anything with them until now.....
Converting them to weathered layout wagons was simple. The body was clipped to the chassis so I prized a small screwdriver between the two and ping, they parted company. I protected the lettering with Mascol before giving the body sides a light coating of Halfords Rosso Red, sprayed on through the spraygun rather than direct from the rattle-can.....
The roof was then sprayed matt black. When almost dry, the roof, ends and chassis were sprayed a much diluted dark rust colour (cellulose). Humbrol Dark Earth weathering powder and diluted PPC Dirty Black did the rest....
The second horsebox was slightly more involved. It is a non-Westinghouse pipe box to D1972 and has electric lighting. I changed the roof vents to shell type before spraying the body sides LMS crimson lake. LMS yellow insignia was applied in BR fashion using an 'M' prefix from LMS lettering. The rest of the vehicle was treated as before but is a little muckier....
A comparison between what BR chose to call 'crimson lake', which in all truth it in no way resembled, and the true crimson lake that had been used by the MR and LMS since the 1870's. The well-respected modeller and MRN editor J.N.Maskelyn used the description carmine red for BR's red....