A couple of years before I started this blog, way back in summer 2010 I attended my first Gauge O Guild Show at Halifax. While there I picked up a couple of kits. One of them was a D&S North Eastern Railway Diagram 67 Horsebox. Now I confess that I have always had the thing about horseboxes so I was pleased to pick the kit up.

Although I bought it from a trader and the pack was still heat sealed, I discovered later that it must have been both an early kit and possibly packed on a Friday afternoon.

Fast forward 12 months to 2011 and I started to build it.

This was at the point where I discovered that there were no instructions in the packet. – remember my Friday afternoon comment.

I did have Volume 3 of Historic Carriage Drawings by Peter Tatlow which although it didn’t have a photo of the diagram 67 Horsebox it did have a drawing which showed that the kit was missing castings or etches for the distinctive door dampers.

Mentioning the lack of instructions over on Western Thunder kindly brought me a pdf copy a snip of them is included below to show the door dampers that I referred to.

The instructions made it clear that they were castings rather than etches. I also noted and this is why I believe it was an earlier kit in the D&S range that although there were brakes in terms of shoes and hangers there were no representations for the yokes. I also have a D&S GNR horsebox kit and that does have yokes so perhaps Danny realised what was missing in later designs.