Production 70XX 'Castles' and 45XX/4575 Prairie tanks
B17 4-6-0 update 20 December 2016
The original plan for this engine was to offer it only as the B17 ‘Footballer’ with the 4200 gallon Group Standard Tender. Football and football clubs remain popular in Britain, but limiting the build to only the ‘Footballers’ seems a bit sad when so many of the other B17 locomotives, often with the smaller Great Eastern tenders, also had such attractive names. So we are conducting a major rethink as to the scope of this project and trying to gauge the level of interest in these other B17s and possibly even the B2s. We would very much appreciate those of you who are interested in this project contacting us about which locomotives you would like us to build.
BR 9F 2-10-0s update 20 December 2016
This locomotive continues to be an important project for us and we remain keen to produce it. At present there is a huge output of BR 9F locomotives, both in kit form and as ready-to-run locomotives from several sources, so it would not be economically sensible for us to make yet another at the present time. We have therefore deferred the project for two years to give the market more time to settle down. One important factor is that we want our 9F to be the best and this will require input of new technologies that we are currently working on as part of our continuous improvement programme. We also want to build the Crosti and rebuilt Crosti versions as we think these are very interesting locomotives from both the visual and technical point of view. So please be patient with us we will put this locomotive into production as soon as we can.
LMS/BR Rebuilt 7P 4-6-0s update 20 December 2016
This project continues to make good progress from the research viewpoint, but we have had to hold it back from getting to the detailed design and production stage as we have taken a delay in the other programmes, especially on the 45XX. The 70XX ‘Castle’ and the GWR tender engines. There is a practical limit to the number of model locomotive programmes that can be managed by a small team on a simultaneous basis and this is quite a complex build. Once we have completed the Great Western locomotive programmes we will have the time and resources to concentrate on the Rebuilt LMS/BR 7P locomotives project.
Our technical panel has already persuaded us to widen the project to include the Rebuilt ‘Jubilees’ and British Legion. A number of customers have also asked us to look at including the original (unrebuilt) ‘Royal Scots’. If we do widen the scope of the project to include these locomotives, our current thinking is to limit it to the late LMS/early BR periods when the locomotives had already switched tender types to the larger Stanier 9 ton/4000 gallon curved sided design. If you are interested in the earlier ‘Royal Scots’ in this configuration, please would you let us know so that we obtain a better feel for demand.
Another odd-ball engine would be the high pressure experimental engine Fury. Is anyone interested in this locomotive? If there was enough demand we might include Fury in the build. Meanwhile we would like to build up the orderbook as much as possible so that we make the locomotives that people really want, based on the programme that we have offered.
So far we have been very encouraged by the response, especially for the Rebuilt ‘Jubilees’ and British Legion, which have proved to be of considerable interest. The LMS/BR Rebuilt 7P locomotives are now planned as a 2018 build.
Standard Class 5 4-6-0 update 20 December 2016
The plan is to produce this locomotive after we have finished the ‘Western’ Diesel Hydraulic. We decided to bring this locomotive forward for production ahead of the BR Standard 9F 2-10-0 as it was a more logical build based on our previous ‘Clan’ and ‘Britannia’ pacific locomotives. There is substantial commonality on parts, especially on the chassis, and the wheels are virtually identical. Other chassis parts such as the cylinders, the front bogie and the valve gear components such as the piston rods, the slide bars and all of the motion except the rear trailing rods are the same from a model-making prospective. The tenders are broadly the same except on the BR1F high-sided version.
The builder is ready to start making the detailed drawings and CAD models based on input already received from us and a substantial number of photographs that he took of a locomotive during his visit to the UK earlier in the summer. Our objective is to try to get the models substantially designed and critiqued into production in 2017 with deliveries of finished models in early 2018.