The wonder of Hornby, West Country Tender Weight

[ColinB]

I thought people might find this quite interesting. One of the things that I have difficulties with is Hornby tender weights when upgrading the DCC socket position to the tender, verses the loco as in older locos. Hornby don't do the weight as a spare part. I have bought a second hand rebuilt West Country Sir Keith Park it has the DCC socket in the loco. I took the tender apart to work out how to add the socket and to my amazement it had the later Duchess tender weight in it. Obviously no wiring for the DCC. The loco looks untouched from new, so did Hornby add these weights to the later build West Countries? When they did move the DCC socket to the tender, they changed the tender top mounting points and changed the weight completely, I assume to give more room. I suppose someone could have fitted as a retrofit, Peters Spares was selling them at one point.