When Nigel Gresley built the first A1 Class locomotive for the Great Northern Railway, it was the start of a domination of the East Coast Main Line by Pacific locomotives. Those original A1 locos were later rebuilt as A3s and the A1 Class that has been modelled by Bachmann was to a different design 45 years later. Indeed, this was the last of a line of LNER Pacific locomotive.

To a design by AH Peppercorn, it was a class of express passenger locomotives and 49 were built at Doncaster between 1948 and 1949. They started to arrive in 1948, after Nationalisation of the railways, and, consequently, none appeared in full LNER livery. The class was originally unnamed, but later received names, mostly during 1950 and 1951.

This is a completely new model this year and three versions of it have been released. These include two models based on the original Peppercorn LNER/BR A1 Class and the new-build Tornado. In tooling the model, provision has been made for design differences between the latter and the original class members, including the chimney and tender axleboxes.

The sample under review is 60147 North Eastern which is in early BR lined green. It is remarkable how fine the lining is on such a small scale model. In every case the three lines (orange-black-orange) are present. Brake hoses are already fitted to the bufferbeams and, while brake rod hangers are modelled, brake rods are not provided (they would be exceedingly difficult to fit on such a small model). Having said that, there is a generous bag of extras, including steps, additional pipe connections, dummy screw couplings, a replacement drawbar, front bogie and two replacement sets of pony truck wheels.