Exclusive to Rails of Sheffield

• All Diecast Model
  
• Dapol’s Innovative Loco to tender easy coupling
  
• NEM Coupling pockets
  
• Powerful and Smooth 5 Pole skew wound motor with flywheel
  
• Highly detailed Body, Tender and cab interior
  
• Loco driving wheels and tender wheels pick up
  
• Exquisite livery application
  
• Zimo Plux22 decoder
  

Electronic Features:

• Working front lamps with 15 user-selectable destination routes including 1 that is user-configurable
  
• Dynamic firebox flicker effect that responds to operating conditions (e.g. blower on/off)
  
• Hi-fidelity sound project recorded
  
• Chuff sounds also operate in DC mode
  
• User-configurable RealDrive with working brake for prototypical driving experience.
  
• Twin Speakers (tender and Locomotive)
  
• Smoke generator controlled via decoder
  

Detail Features:

• Three cab variations
  
• Two smoke deflectors
  
• Two safety valve positions
  
• Two Buffer types for locomotive and tender
  
• AWS Battery on selected versions
  
• Golden Arrow brackets – where appropriate
  
• Smoke box Roundel – where appropriate
  
• Two types of top casing valve hatches
  
• High sided and cut-down 4,500-gallon tenders
  
• Tender water treatment details
  
• Two tender ladder styles
  

History

Created at the height of the Second World War, Bulleid’s ‘Light Pacific’ was a locomotive designed to fulfil a variety of roles on almost the entirety of the Southern Railway’s network. Whilst taking many design elements from the ‘Merchant Navy’ class, Bulleid’s new design had to be both lighter and smaller to be able to access the lighter laid lines in Devon, Cornwall and towards the Kent Coast, but also be capable of handling faster passenger and freight traffic, and needed the power to match.

The first locomotives entered service in 1945, quickly becoming known as ‘Spam Cans’ due to their air-smoothed casing. The first forty-eight were named after towns and villages in the West of England served by the SR, with cast nameplates and crests adorning the bodysides. As further locomotives were built and spread further across the network, the remaining locomotives built by the SR commemorated RAF squadrons, airfields, commanders and aircraft that had participated in the Battle of Britain over Kent, Surrey and Sussex.

Further locomotives built after nationalisation until 1951 resulted in a final total of 110 of the ‘West Country / Battle of Britain’ class (as they were now known) in service. Despite a lot of success in operation on a cash-strapped post-war railway, some elements of Bulleid’s innovative design proved problematic and sixty of the locomotives were rebuilt by British Railways between 1957 and 1961. Fifty of the locomotives retained their original configuration for their entire lives.

With the ongoing electrification of larger parts of the Southern Region, the days were numbered for steam locomotive operation, but it is testament to Bulleid’s design that 37 of his Light Pacifics made it into the final year of steam operation (on the SR) in 1967. The class has proven equally popular in preservation, with no less than twenty remaining. Half of these in original ‘air smoothed’ condition as per our model including 34051 ‘Winston Churchill’ which takes pride of place in the National Collection.