Description
This is a pre order item which cannot be checked out. Please order by telephone or email, Exprected price £175 DCC rveady or £270 DCC & Sound.
Starting life before the SECR even existed, and designed by James Stirling, the O Class was conceived as an all-purpose freight locomotive to work across the entire South Eastern Railway. Between 1878 and 1899 122 O Class locos were built. Following the first group of 20 that were built by Sharp, Stewart and Co., several more batches were completed, both by them and by the South Eastern Railways’ own Ashford Works. The final five locos were built in 1899 under the South Eastern and Chatham Railway name, as the SER and LCDR had put aside their differences and sensibly merged into a single entity.
Outperforming its predecessors, the O lived up to its expectations, but with the amalgamation of the two railways, new skills and resources became available. As such, 59 of these locos were rebuilt, given larger boilers, and reclassified as the Class O1. Working alongside similar-sized locomotives, it became apparent that locos such as the new C class could outperform the Class O1 and O locos on freight duties. Though they remained spread across the county for many years, they were relegated to more modest branchline, shunting or light duties.
Many of the class survived both global conflicts, the ‘Big 4’ era and soldiered on until the last days of British mainline steam, working branch lines such as the Kent and East Sussex Railway and East Kent Railway. With the sun setting on the O1s future, BR Class member No. 31065 earned one final claim to fame by leading the ‘Farewell to Steam’ railtour on the Hawkhurst Branch. The last of the class was sadly withdrawn from service in 1962.
Thankfully No. 31065 would live on. Esmond Lewis-Evans spotted it on a visit to Ashford, where it was being used to train apprentices. He saved it from the scrap heap, and it spent several years at the Ashford Steam Centre. When the museum failed to pay its rent, No.65 was dismantled and secretly dispersed in its component pieces across the Southeast, this determined display of preservation cunningly prevented British Rail from claiming it for repossession. It wasn’t until 1996 that its parts were moved to the Bluebell Railway, where it can still be seen today, and it was rebuilt for the centenary year of the SECR.
Spec for this loco :-
No.1379
Southern plain black (?sunshine? lettering)
Tapered buffers
Fully riveted smokebox
Standard bufferbeams
Tender water gauge
Can motor and flywheel
Next18 decoder socket in tender
Plunger loco pickups
Tender wheel bearing pickups
Firebox glow
Twin speakers in tender
NEM pockets front and rear
Cosmetic scale coupling
Route indicator discs in detail bag
