That was excellent, and has inspired me to try and upgrade the lights on my little fleet of old Hornby HST's

Good work. Impressed by your determination and thrift! I have done a similar job with my own 125 (which is even older!). It’s amazing what we can do when we try. It looks as if you have inspired a few others too. Keep having a go at the soldering though, it will get better.

Excellent video. It's good to watch a video presented by a normal person. Too often a so called simple job involves incredibly complicated electronic work or access to equipment that none of us actually own. I reckon I could upgrade my HSTs this way and not destroy them during the process. Also, the auto focus going in and out made it amusing and I liked it. Thanks very much.

A very timely find. I a awaiting the arrival of a few brass cogs as I have a few locks with ringfield motors that squeal like banshees or just spin.

Hi Andy, great video ! Last week I was given an old train set which is the same 125 as yours so when I found your video I was excited. Have learnt so much thanks to you, so now I'm going to get it out of the box and check it out. . . well . . . see if it works at all. Thanks for that. Cheers, Rick the Bulldog

I love my hst 125 so much that I went a mile ahead and done motor conversion and dcc decoders when changed my layout. Somehow I couldn't say goodbye to it. I believe it's my oldest set I ever had 🤣🤣

Interesting the problems you have had with your "childhood train". I was gifted a similar Hornby Starter Train Set of the Intercity 125 in the same livery about 30 or so years back (they looked sharp then). It certainly worked on Christmas day, but once my Dad had gone to the lengths of building and fitting a baseboard, the set refused to work ("big full -stop"). It was very saddening, despite best efforts to get it to work (service by Hornby, new power controller, tweaking track). In the end, I remember it being car-booted off; sad really. I can see where the potential faults may lie with these "ringfield" motors; these sets are made to a price to get people into the hobby as well. Nowadays you have recourse to correct these problems with the retailers and the manufactures, but back then channels for addressing such issues were much narrower. For my Dad, he saw it as a defeat by something that should been correctable and very straight forward. He then gifted me a set by a totally different manufacturer the following Christmas, and it continues to work faultlessly. The only caveat is I am unable to model the British Railway System.

Thanks for sharing, your attempts to fix did make me laugh and bought back some memories. Last year I tried to solder the cog in place on an old 47 because it was coming loose like yours. My soldering skills are as bad as yours and I didn’t think to removed the other gears and guess what, yes I managed to melt them together🤣. Ordered some more gears, then tried gluing the cog on but only lasted a few laps like your, then gave up. No seeing your success I might order a cog and have another go. 🤞

Your right to upgrade the hst. The new ones are very expensive and to be honest appart from them colouring the vents on the top silver they look just the same. A cam motor is also a good cheap upgrade. Just a tip, to get the body off instead of using a screwdriver try a credit or debit card slid down the side, or plastic trim removal tools you would use for getting car door panels off with. Much less chance of damaging the model. Cheap to buy off ebay

Don’t forget the wiring needs to be reversed on one end, so that reds show when whites show on the other end

found my old hst hornby nobulb, do peters spares supply these?