This is something I've been mulling over for a quite a few weeks now, and for two reasons:
1) I've not attached couplings to a 7mm scale model before
and
2) It's not my model.
Of these the second is of much greater concern to me because I want to ensure the client is delighted with the finished product. In this case the customer has advised me he needs the couplings attached to the bogies (as opposed to mounted somewhere on the carriage) and set at an exact height, which has been a big help. So the main issue was how to achieve it.
There's another difference to the 009 models I normally work with in that these are whitemetal bogies with just a central cross-member and no frames at the ends.
Clearly, then, there would need to be a long shaft of some kind running almost 2 inches from the centre of the bogies to the end of the carriage. And there was also the issue of avoiding the leading axle.
The pics below will show you the solution I've adopted.
A bit of (rather untidily cut) brass has been Araldite-d onto the whitemetal stretcher and then takes a cunning step up, which not only avoids the axle but also raises it up to the specified height for the top surface of the bemo couplings.
Then at the other end I've soldered on another bit of scrap brass to form a jaw into which the shaft of the plastic bemo coupling will fit snugly.
The beauty of it is that if, when the carriage is delivered to the Scottish Highlands, the couplings are either too low or too high to mate with my client's existing stock all he has to do is give the brass shaft a little tweak one way or the other and all should be well.
I'm not pretending it's the prettiest bit of model engineering you've ever seen, but I think it's practical and effective, and that, I would suggest, is what matters most on a layout.
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