{"id":10,"date":"2025-09-11T19:12:59","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T19:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modelrail.uk\/?p=10"},"modified":"2026-01-27T15:53:42","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T15:53:42","slug":"lima-mk3-3a-coaches-introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modelrail.uk\/?p=10","title":{"rendered":"Lima Mk3\/3a coaches ~ Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>A quick potted history<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">British Rail introduced their Mk3 coaches in 1972 for the HST prototype and then built more for the production HSTs with variants 3a and 3b for locomotive hauled trains. There are plenty of resources online explaining the differences between the variants but visually, the main differences are the roof vents and the fact that the HST coaches have no buffers. Additionally, the white lining on the blue &amp; grey livery differs between the HST coaches and the loco hauled stock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Models of the Mk3 &amp; variants<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hornby produced their version of the HST around about the same time that the real thing appeared on the rails. The shape of the power car wasn&#8217;t quite right and the Mk3 coaches were nowhere near the correct scale length. Jouef produced a full length model of the Mk3a while Lima made something that was neither a Mk3 or a 3a! Oxford Rail introduced their Mk3a coaches in 2017 but in 2025, only Hornby produce Mk3 coaches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Lima model<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">From the late 1970s until their demise in 2004, Lima produced Mk3\/3a coaches in a number of liveries. Even by today&#8217;s standards, these are pretty good models but they can be improved upon with a bit of work and brought up to date. However, it is important to bear in mind that it isn&#8217;t difficult to spend more on improving the Lima model than it would cost to buy a new Hornby version.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This series of articles will describe the deficiencies of the Lima model and how to overcome them, producing passable models in both blue &amp; grey and Swallow liveried HST Mk3 versions as well as MK3a Scotrail liveried coaches used in the class 47\/7 hauled push &#8211; pull trains. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A quick potted history British Rail introduced their Mk3 coaches in 1972 for the HST prototype and then built more for the production HSTs with variants 3a and 3b for locomotive hauled trains. There are plenty of resources online explaining the differences between the variants but visually, the main differences are the roof vents and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mk3-3a-coaches"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/modelrail.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/modelrail.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/modelrail.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modelrail.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modelrail.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/modelrail.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13,"href":"https:\/\/modelrail.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions\/13"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/modelrail.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modelrail.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modelrail.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}