The 2EPB (or Class 416) was a distinctly unglamorous electric multiple unit assigned to some of the more backward parts of the London commuter system.
2EPBs slogged up and down the third rails from 1956 (when they were introduced wearing this delicious all-over green livery), ten years after that being repainted into all-over Rail Blue with yellow ends, and a few years later getting the Rail Blue and pearl grey two-tone scheme. Towards the end of their lives they wore Network SouthEast branding, too, and most of them ended their days in 1995.
This model is delightful. 00 gauge, it's 1/76th scale (each coach is, roughly, about a foot long and a couple of inches high).
It's completely exquisite. The detailing is wonderful for a ready-to-run model that is retailing at the moment for under £80. My only criticisms would be that the engine block is a bit intrusive (see the big black blob through the windows in the image, above), and I'm not wild about this new fad for interior lighting -- especially when there is none over the engine block so in the dark it all looks a bit half-arsed.
Those are pretty bloody minor quibbles, I have to say, especially when this emu close-couples as closely as this:
My all-over blue models have arrived and the first has just completed running-in.
I am already grinning stupidly with the amount of pleasure it's giving me.
PS: Someone has asked a question in the comments to which you should refer before looking at this last pair of pictures:
That's an isometric view of CJ Freezer's model railway design Minories, his most famous work, which has featured on here before.
It's the original, three-track plan that I like best, but I think there may be scope for an additional single-track on a curve at a higher level at the back, emerging from a high-level cutting wall and almost immediately disappearing again (a thought stolen from the extraordinary original track outside King's Cross, where freight lines hover above the passenger routes). Something would occasionally (and mysteriously) shuttle backwards and forwards above the scene. Maybe.
5 comments:
Can we have some details of your model rail set up please? Many thanks..
As your new set has completed its running-in (i wish you many happy hours with it), i assume you have set up some rails. Any chance we get to see your set up? Something detailed along the lines of Broad Street Station, or more stylized?
I'm waiting for the also long-awaited BR Eastern Region Railbus from Heljan. The prototype is one of a series of small railbuses produced in the 1950s to run on little-used railway lines they proved to be very economical but also somewhat unreliable. Heljan have modelled vehicle no. E79962 which was built by Waggon and Maschinenbau in Germany in 1958 and was withdrawn from BR service in 1967. It is now preserved on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway.
Trevor: I never saw the railbuses in operation, though the model looks enticingly dinky.
Anonymii: "stylised" is the polite word for what is, in essence, a rather bizarre track layout that is decidedly unphotogenic. It's mutated from something that was only a couple of steps above a trainset, but not to anywhere near my satisfaction.
I've experimented along the way, including with a 4-track variant of Minories (if you don't know what that is, see the PS in the original post), but I now need to do something to rationalise what I currently have. I'm seeing another variant of Minories emerging (I love those deep, dirty, brick-lined cuttings on the approaches to places like Liverpool Street, or the western and northern stations on the Circle line).
Thanks for updates. I was planning myself to return to my childhood hobby with a shunting layout along the lines on inglenook sidings, though with more points. But I was then bought a train "set" for Christmas. So got handed an oval of track which quickly expanded to two ovals, wagons and a gwr pannier. Space made me take it all apart though. Now I'm rethinking shunting layout, though the new couplings on both hornby and dapol wagons are unsatisfactory. Hmmmm...
Paul (ode boy)
Post a Comment