Graham Farish 'Black 5'
The 'Black 5', as it has become known, was a typical Stanier locomotive and was introduced in 1934. 842 were eventually built at Crewe, Horwich, Derby and by both Vulcan Foundry and Armstrong Whitworth, making it the largest class of steam locomotives in Britain. Some survived to the end of steam and 16 were preserved. They were built in batches until 1951, the last two batches by British Railways as a stop gap before the Standard Class 5MT came into production.
The original Graham Farish 'Black 5' model was released in 1978 and 8 versions of it were made prior to Bachmann buying the company in 2000. Between 2004 and 2008, Bachmann produced a further 4 examples of the class but the age of the model always showed. With an N gauge model of a 'Jubilee' recently tooled, a replacement of the old 'Black 5' was not a hard decision to make and the new model has now arrived. Like all recently tooled Graham Farish models, there is a high level of detail and four models are initially planned. Here we have 372-135 in LMS black and numbered 5020.