31st January 2020

It's the Stafford railway exhibition this weekend and so far my Bachmann 90 reveals seem to have happened on weekends where others are having happy times modelling too, which is nice, for everyone. The first of these being on the days leading up to Warley last year. Recently I had been coming to terms with not seeing anything new from Bachmann this year in the form of any EWS or DB Schenker/DB Cargo era (Era 10 and 11) liveried locos, we saw them debut in RfD, Inter City Swallow and Freightliner Powerhaul and a few weeks back, it was revealed that the fourth Bachmann 90 would be the Belgian promotional livery from the 1990's when there were three continental liveries back in the BR days.

Not being content with waiting for Bachmann to do a relevant liveried 90, I had pressed on with sourcing such a loco through an expert reliverier, it was my intention initially for one, which after some deliberation, was going to be 90034 in ex-DRS DB, this livery is one of my four main favourites in the DB Cargo era, those being 90024, 90028, 90034 and 90037. 90034 is very simple, in what was the DRS blue from when 90034 was loaned in the days before DRS acquired the Class 88's, and with 90034 returning to DB, and the DRS branding removed and DB logos on the nose and at opposite cab ends. My one number favourite is 90024 in Malcolm Logistics, but it initially seemed like an impossibility to do this one, so i thought I would source the more simplistic liveries first and then maybe Bachmann would catch up with 90024 etc. Soo... with 90034 coming along nicely in the paint shop, this then, by chance became two with the second most recent 90 re-liverying with 90028, one which I went to see officially unveiled at York Railway Museum last January as it was named Sir William McAlpine and had operated a charter from York, immediately after being named, to London Kings Cross - with the service from London having been taken by Flying Scotsman, most of the public out on that day at York were there for the Scotsman, but I had travelled up to see the 90 unveil. So, when 90 number two was in the offing, having had 90019, which was the first in the new DB livery, 90028 was the one I was going to go with, and not that long before writing this, 90028 has just come through a rather wet and gloomy Staffordshire, paired up with Driver Jack Mills, 90036 in what I have come to call DB minus Schenker livery.

This brings me onto 90 number three, and having recently seen Hornby's 2020 launch video on youtube with ''New Junction'' and the Malcolm Logistics Class 90, having let my Hornby 90's go, it was a bit of a surprise to see their offering but never did I expect to see a Bachmann equivalent come along quite so soon, until a few days ago, when out of the blue, a fellow RM-web-user messaged me advising that he had seen one such model in Olivia's Trains, initially, i didn't believe it, bearing in mind that for the last year or so, i had been researching ways in which my Bachmann Class 90 could be reliveried into Malcolm Logistics without any success and several people had advised me to be patient and it will come along, i had looked at where the Malcolm livery had been conceived and seen similar liveries on on a range of lorries made by Corgi, and had even spoken to a professional reliverier who had managed to get a vinyl of the 90 produced, but this ended up being for the whole loco so it didn't really work as it covered up the windows and the doors and there were some small detail issues with it, so it was a good attempt, but it wasn't what i wanted for 90 number three, so there is the back story to the pursuit of 90024.

Sooooo, having pinched myself as I was looking at the website at Olivia's trains, and having seen this late in the day, i managed to speak to Erica at Olivia's Trains, just before 5pm, where it was established that this was indeed a reliveried loco and very much a one off, not like the forthcoming Hornby equivalent, well, i had to do it, i didn't want to miss out on what was an incredible opportunity, and whilst having missed the postman this morning, instead of queueing up at the model exhibition tomorrow, i will be queuing up at the sorting office for 90 number three - if as you read this, you think you want a Bachmann Class 90 in Malcolm Logistics livery, speak to the team at Olivia's Trains. I want to say a big thank you to them for doing this and also to Barry for letting me use their pictures here also, thank you Olivia's... 

I can't wait to get a consist of 90024 and either 90028 or 90034 configured, as a model representation of 4M25, the Malcolm Freight service

Kat @johnsonstreetIEMD