Upgrading the Bachmann Suburbans

I like the Bachmann suburban coaches they fit in well with the time and place of where I am proposing to model (Banbury 1962) but as models they are rather dated in a number of areas. For example they do not have NEM couplings.

Here is a slightly out of focus picture of one -

I have one pair of these coaches and they will always run together. So I would like to do the following -

Add some passengers Add lighting (both interior and rear oil lamp) Change the couplings to Kadee

To add the lighting then there are choices to be made - do I want to have DCC control of the lights?, how am I going to make the pickups work? do I want each coach to be independently controlled and fed with power or shall I have them as a pair?

In fact in this case it is an easy decision - as these coaches will always run as a pair - I think the thing to do is put a single DCC decoder in the brake compartment and then join the coaches electrically by some means - this means putting the pickups on the same coach as the decoder only.

I will cover the choices of components in more detail in the next post - in the meantime here is how to take the coaches apart...

The first task is to remove the bogies - simples - undo the obvious centre screw in each. Removing the body is a little harder - it is held by six clips on the body that need to be prised away from the cut outs in the side of the base plastic.

Once the body is off then you find that the same six clips that held the body to the base also hold the interior mouding in place - the interior moulding needs to be prised over the clips

Once inside my first job was to glue in some lucky passengers using regular airfix type glue - in this case Revell Contacta.

OK those are the easy bits done, next I have to work on the harder stuff of electronics and connections before doing the very tricky looking hack to get Kadee couplers to work with the stock.