Hornby 'Clan' Class Locomotives
The Hornby 'Clan' was new to the catalogue last year and was seen as a logical step following the super-detailed 'Britannia' introduced in 2006. The model's introduction sparked off renewed interest in the class and the new-build member currently under construction. The discussions that followed revealed that the bad reputation the class has suffered from for the last 50 years, is not entirely fair.
The Hornby model is most attractive; due to the smaller boiler it looks sleeker than
its cousin the 'Britannia'. The model also benefits from the steady increase in detail
that Hornby applies to each new model. For example, the cab is more detailed that that of
the 'Britannia' model.
Only ten of the real locomotives were built before the rest of the order was cancelled. Those built were for the Scottish Region, thus the clan names, and those cancelled would have been used in the Southern Region, and it is what would have been the first of these that is now being built by enthusiasts - Hengist.
The two members of the class modelled so far are 72000 Clan Buchanan
(R2846), which was released in October, and 72008 Clan Macleod R2847 which arrived in the shops in December. Both are, of course, in BR Brunswick green, but Clan Buchanan has the early BR decals on its tender while Clan Macleod has the later ones and also has warning flashes applied to the real locomotives in the early 1960s. A third model is planned this year and this will be Clan Macgregor, set in the same period as Clan Macleod.The amount of detail on these locomotives is superb and leaves one wondering where the model designer can go next. There is extensive pipework and cabling on the locomotives and some on the tenders and it is all three-dimentional - mostly add-ons to the mouldings. Assembly of these models must be a complicated and time consuming task.