Max Stafford's Kennel

I’m not one to get overly excited about new locomotive releases on the Ready to Run front these days as; A- They are increasingly irrelevant to Scottish and Northern English modellers on the whole and; B- I generally prefer to build my own, having complete control over the specification of the chassis and running gear without having to fuss over converting items from OO to EM gauge and worrying if the supplied motor is going to be man enough for the job in mind!
Today though, I lay these concerns aside as my friend Ian Pritchard sends me this photo from the Heljan stand at Warley Show. It shows the pre-production sample of the original Pilot Scheme B&RCW Type 2 diesel locos, later known as Class 26/0.
Some of the ‘in crowd’ have their own designations for these beasts. Having already covered the main production variants of these machines, the men from Denmark have now turned their attention to the original batch of twenty (D5300-19), introduced in 1958 and spending their first eighteen months or so on the Eastern before taking the journey north and becoming pretty much the archetypal ‘Scottish’ type 2.
These machines were very closely linked with Lowland operations in the east of Scotland, taking over most ‘Class 2’ passenger services on the Waverley Route in particular from late 1962. Some were later converted to operate MGR services to Cockenzie power station, but a number still plied the route until the Gotterdämmerung of 1969.
Back to the image though; it appears rather encouraging and it’s noted that signature features such as the different bogie springs, access steps and low-mounted door handles have all been successfully portrayed.
This is one RTR loco I will be greeting with enthusiasm!