Thee's a common factor to most of the small shortlived classes mentioned - they come from that melancholy sector of the RTR market "Cancelled Futures". These are the ones where a manufacturer tooled up the latest loco to invest in the future only to discover that BR had cancelled the future in question....
Thus the Hornby Dublo Co-Bo , and the Lone Star Baby Deltic were representing the latest modern traction when they came out . Unfortunately they'd put their money on horses that fell at an early fence in the Type 2 Grand National. Triang picked the Brush loco as their entry in the Type 2 Stakes and struck lucky.
Triang weren't always so lucky. When they launched EM2 it was a glamourous modern express loco on the latest most high profile mainline electric railway. Unfortunately BR went for 25kV AC not 1500V DC. The Blue Pullman was a near miss - state of the art at the time, but not that long lived and it didn't develop into a common type
Hornby came another cropper 20 years on with the APT
In all these cases , they didn't realise they were tooling up a shortlived loco with few in the class and a limited geographical range: they thought they were investing in the future
Deliberately releasing a loco you know was a small short lived class is different. The Hornby "29" is actually a bit of a hybrid between the unrebuilt 22 and rebuilt 29 , and there were nearly 60 NBL Type 2 diesel electrics built originally . It was still a pretty surprising choice, even though they also worked briefly on GN suburban work and in E Anglia
We should certainly get new HST power cars before we get any new AC electrics - but I'm not holding my breath for either. When there seems to be little or no interest in retooling the 86 (100 locos, 40+ years service life, wide range, lots of liveries) and there's no 87 , I doubt we will see first generation AC electrics or the 89 in the foreseable future
Thus the Hornby Dublo Co-Bo , and the Lone Star Baby Deltic were representing the latest modern traction when they came out . Unfortunately they'd put their money on horses that fell at an early fence in the Type 2 Grand National. Triang picked the Brush loco as their entry in the Type 2 Stakes and struck lucky.
Triang weren't always so lucky. When they launched EM2 it was a glamourous modern express loco on the latest most high profile mainline electric railway. Unfortunately BR went for 25kV AC not 1500V DC. The Blue Pullman was a near miss - state of the art at the time, but not that long lived and it didn't develop into a common type
Hornby came another cropper 20 years on with the APT
In all these cases , they didn't realise they were tooling up a shortlived loco with few in the class and a limited geographical range: they thought they were investing in the future
Deliberately releasing a loco you know was a small short lived class is different. The Hornby "29" is actually a bit of a hybrid between the unrebuilt 22 and rebuilt 29 , and there were nearly 60 NBL Type 2 diesel electrics built originally . It was still a pretty surprising choice, even though they also worked briefly on GN suburban work and in E Anglia
We should certainly get new HST power cars before we get any new AC electrics - but I'm not holding my breath for either. When there seems to be little or no interest in retooling the 86 (100 locos, 40+ years service life, wide range, lots of liveries) and there's no 87 , I doubt we will see first generation AC electrics or the 89 in the foreseable future
