J&M HUGHES KIT OF A CLASS 120

I was disappointed when Heljan decided to cancel their proposed Class 120 DMU a few years back as this was always a model I hoped one day someone, somewhere, would produce. I have memories of their use on Cardiff to Birmingham Snow Hill services which impressed my 6 year old mind way back in 1961, simply because they had a gold braided attendant behind the buffet counter (at least I think it was gold braid, that’s what my memory tells me!) Or memories of holidays in Scotland later on and travelling between Inverness and Aberdeen, another journey for which they seemed ideal. Or their use in the early 70s on the Cardiff to Crewe services, again with working buffet and usually with the addition of a Class 121 ‘Bubble car’ in the formation to improve their power to weight ratio over the border hills. Sadly, they were later relegated to more suburban use which was not an ideal duty for them.

So, one of these comfortable wellappointed units was a firm target to model. Scratch building seemed the only rather daunting prospect until the Stafford Show of 2023. On the J & M Hughes stand was a kit for a 120. Something I had no idea existed.

An order was placed and some months later three boxes turned up. The kit seems pretty comprehensive, and the first eye catching thing is the brass body pieces. I certainly can’t fault these they look spot on.

I was pleased to see that there are multiple castings, mostly in resin including the body ends. I was also pleased that most of the main components seemed to be there including things like the gas bottle holders for the trailer buffet. It has to be said though that these need a lot of cleaning up and some of the parts are not as sharp as they could be. In particular, I was not keen on the engine moulding and substituted some of the resin castings for a rival kit manufacturer, Easy Build, which I thought were sharper.


Bulkheads and vestibule dividers are not provided so made some out of Plastikard faced with wood veneer. There were no instructions with the kit although a basic layout with dimensions for positioning roof ventilators and main underframe components plus seat configuration was provided.

The Class 120s have a slightly different underfloor layout to most DMUs but the dimensional drawing provided was, in the main, ok. The two air tanks on the Power Cars are not shown quite right, as on the prototype the bottom of the tanks is level with the bottom of the battery boxes and very prominent so the tanks need additional spacers…despite realising this I didn’t quite get these tanks in the correct position-they are slightly more inboard than they should be. I did, however, also scratch build a few of the controls and boxes that should fit above these cylinders.

But the main thing with this kit was try and recreate the well-appointed interior with mirrors, drop down tables, luggage rack lighting and reasonably detailed cab. There are some excellent photos of these on the “Railcar” website including quite a few of the units when first constructed and before they had turned a wheel in service.

Sadly, colour interior photos of these units in green livery have eluded me but by peering at colour photos of the exterior its apparent that the seats were green in Second class and black and gold in First. Curtains took a little while for me to establish what colour they were when originally fitted but I settled on light fawn for Second class and a dark fawn or browny colour for First. No idea of the colour of the linoleum in second but I went for a medium fawn colour.

The walls of the prototype were covered with a distinctive light green wood panelling effect.

The Second class seats supplied in the kit are not strictly quite the right profile but painting the headrest light fawn and knocking up a green patterned moquette on the computer plus fitting armrests made something looking reasonably ok. The First Class seats are more prototypical and once painted and fitted with white antimacassars look quite presentable.

I experimented with the wall panelling, settling for a Pear Green Tulipwood veneer from The Veneer Hub. It’s a bit too green as supplied so a couple of washes of thinned down white paint brings it to a shade which is acceptable as shown above. It’s a bit fiddly cutting it out so where curtains or other items hide it I didn’t put it in place. Interior window surrounds were finished with strips of Plastikard painted brown.

One of the very distinctive features of these units was the luggage rack lighting. The luggage racks themselves can’t be properly seen from normal viewing distance but I wanted to try and replicate the lighting effects. As a result, I bought a strip of surface mounted LEDs and some long strips of nickel silver 0.8mm wire. It’s a very fiddly job soldering these so I made up a jig out of a strip of brass with suitable holes filed in the edge that would just hold a LED and give the correct spacing for three consecutive LEDs.

It was not wholly successful as I lost some LEDs into the deep recesses of the workshop floor, never to be seen again. I persevered and finally got to some strips of LEDs attached to two pieces of nickel silver wire. It’s easy to get LED polarity wrong so extra attention needs to be paid to this) Solder paste was very useful. I then cut out some spacers to hold two outer strips of wire which are electrically inert. Initially I used thin Plastikard for the spacers but this was a bit flimsy so I switched to 4mm square plastic rod.

I found on eBay some “super fine” cable which allowed me to wire the racks up reasonably unobtrusively. To finish them off I added a 2mm nylon washer to the LED to form the diffuser. The inert outer nickel silver wire was then soldered to small brass brackets and in turn these were soldered to the bodyside. The luggage racks are not an accurate representation of the original but look ok when illuminated.

So next we take a look at the cab. The resin cab front seems to be reasonably accurate although has quite a bit of flash. I wanted to make a reasonable job of the cab, in particular the distinctive centre console between the two windscreens. Peter Clarke models produce a rather nice generic first generation cab detailing kit with sufficient parts for two cabs.

Unfortunately, I had started detailing the cab before I discovered this kit, so had scratch built the between windscreen dials and engine and air and axle light console before the kit arrived therefore the pictures in my photos are my scratch built efforts rather than the rather nice Peter Clarke examples which I will use for the other driving cab and are in the Peter Clarke kit.

I wanted to provide some extra interest to the cab so inserted a blue surface mounted LED to illuminate the engine/air and axle lights and a warm white LED with some fine fibre optics at the back to illuminate the gauge panels.

Driver is the ‘Class 121/2 bubble car’ driver from Modelu which I have attempted to paint in the colour of the uniform which drivers of these units wore.. I cut his legs off to get him close to the controls but, in reality, probably didn’t need to do that! The top row of lights on the engine/ air and axle console is slightly dimmer than the lower row something I will try and address in the other cab. While the cab moulding is accurate as far as I can tell, the fact that it is moulded in resin means the windscreen glazing is not as near flush with the outside surface as ideal. I am mulling over using the resin mouldings as a pattern for a home made brass cab at the other end. To be honest the resin cab doesn’t look too bad, the lack of the windscreen being flush is much more noticeable in photos than in normal viewing.

The cab roof took quite a bit of shaping to get it something like but to my mind still seems just a tad higher than it appears in prototype photos-I think I will just have to live with that. I have fixed the cab roof with two long M4 Allen bolts going through the floor of the door vestibules into an M4 ‘Top Hat’ knocked up on the lathe and Araldited to the roof supplemented with some M2 Bolts emeried flush to the roof surface. I scored weld marks into the roof but perhaps didn’t score deep enough as the painting process has obliterated them. One oddity with the prototype is that some of these units had a white ‘dome’ over the cab and some didn’t. I have a photo of the prototype of the unit modelled and it seems like it was all one uniform colour when new. I have painted it in ‘Early Multiple Unit Green’ as its more attractive I think than the later darker ‘Late Multiple Unit Green’ and certainly some of the batch I am modelling came out in this slightly lighter shade.

It’s my intention to introduce sound to the DMU so space has been left for a speaker. I have used a ribbon cable to link the various lights to the trailing headstock. Not exactly sure how I am going to couple the vehicles electrically or mechanically yet. Possibly the answer will appear in a future article.

I probably need to populate the unit with passengers, but this seems to require me to take out a mortgage to pay for the number of people I need so we will have to see about that. Maybe it will be just an empty stock working on the layout!

One thing I have not modelled is a destination in the destination box although I have illuminated the box. I need to look into how to achieve a ‘Birmingham Snow Hill’ or ‘Cardiff General’ in the very limited space. I was originally going to fit fibre optic marker lights to the front and indeed did fit one to the roof marker light but looking at prototype pictures where they were often obliterated by dirt it didn’t seem worth all the trouble, so the roof one is not currently wired.

Detailing the interior meant I had to paint the outside first. I was very conscious it would be easy to scratch so varnished it and left it a few weeks to properly harden before fitting the interior. I used etch primer with Railmatch paint and Fox decals. If anyone knows where I can get accurate ‘Buffet’ decals for the TRSB I would be interested to know as Fox don’t seem to do them.

All in all, I must say this kit is very good value I feel, although not for the faint hearted. I am sure many O Gauge modellers could make a better job than my attempt but hopefully there are some ideas on possibilities set out above.

I have spent quite a few hours getting the first vehicle to the stage it’s at. I did this vehicle first as I felt it would be the most tedious. Now before I move onto the buffet, I have to make the decision whether to model the buffet in operation, with gold braided attendant, or closed up. Closed up would be much easier!