Along the coast with Graham Farish

New in Bachmann’s ‘N’ gauge range is a Regional Railways Class 37/4 and a trio of matching Mk.1 coaches.

THE past couple of months have seen Bachmann refresh its Regional Railways range in 4mm with the appearance of a new Class 37/4 in the colours along with a trio of Mk.1 and Mk.2a coaches. ‘N’ gauge modellers can now enjoy a similar set of models with the release of the same English Electric machine and three Mk.1 coaches.

The Class 37 again portrays No. 37422 Robert F. Fairlie (371-170, £121.95), which carried Regional Railways livery from April 1993 until the turn of the century. During this time, it was largely deployed on the North West and North Wales loco-hauled passenger diagrams. The colours are well applied on the pristine model, including the same revised shade of dark blue that makes a considerable difference to the look of the livery. The white stripe is perhaps a little ‘wavy’ in its application though under close examination but the ‘Tractor’ looks the part overall.

While Regional Railways largely employed Mk.2a coaches on the North Wales and North West services, it did make use of a number of Mk.1s as well to provide additional capacity. These are represented here by Tourist Standard Open (TSO) No. 4854 (374-017), First Corridor (FK) No. 13225 (374-167) and Brake Standard Corridor (BSK) No.35452 (374-194). All three are priced £30.95 and as usual come with an accessory bag that includes bufferbeam pipes.

The different bogies fitted to the coaches have been faithfully re-created with the TSO and FK riding on the B4 design while the BSK is shod with Commonwealths. As usual though, the models are resolutely vacuum-brake only when the real things were dual-braked. The Regional Railways livery is well applied, right down to the first class lozenges and no smoking signs, giving a trio of Mk.1s that perfectly complement the Type 3. Review by Simon Bendall

Read more Modeller News in the May issue of RE – on sale now!